Bhubaneswar: Vast majority branches of different banks in six coastal districts of Odisha affected by severe cyclonic storm Fani have started functioning, top officials of the both the central and the state government said here Thursday.
Union Additional Secretary in the Finance Ministry Debasis Panda told newspersons that 99 per cent of the brick and mortar banks branches have been made operational.
He said, so far 1,934 bank branches out of 1,992 have started functioning in the districts of Puri, Khurda, Cuttack, Kendrapara, Jagatsinghpur and Jajpur.
Talking to newspersons after jointly reviewing the restoration of banking services in the state in the aftermath of the damaged caused by Fani, Panda said there was some problem in the functioning of the ATMs in Puri, Khurdha and Cuttack due to lack of connectivity.
Senior Officials of the RBI, state government, SLBC, Bankers, insurance companies and Telecom companies were present at the meeting.
Panda hoped that the ATMs would start functioning by the end of this week.
Odisha Finance Secretary Ashok Meena said, except the ATM of the Cooperative and Grameen Banks, over 2,000 out of 2,921 ATMs of the remaining banks have been made operational.
The banks have been asked to give priority to MSME, agriculture, business and personal loans, he said.
Meena said the Banks were asked to restructure the loan as per the RBI Master Circulation and settled the claims of the customers at the earliest.
(UNI)
