post news network
Bhubaneswar, August 1: In a bid to offer banking services to people in unbanked rural areas, banks are given a target of reaching 677 Grama Panchayats by year 2020. Of these, banks have to open 340 brick and mortar (B&M) branches and in the rest they either have to open ultra small branches or appoint banking correspondents, an official of the state-level bankers’ committee told Orissa POST.
The target, now under discussion, may see minor changes in a forthcoming meeting. The targets of each bank will also be fixed at this meeting. The banks will meet 50 per cent of the set target in this fiscal and 25 per cent in the next two fiscals, an official said.
He said RBI Bhubaneswar and the state government have jointly fixed a target for the next three years, starting with the current fiscal. On the year-wise list of branches opened in unbanked gram panchayats during the last three years, the official said banks in the state have opened 221 branches in the last three fiscals, of which 27 were opened in FY16-17, while 69 and 125 branches respectively were opened in the last two fiscals.
“Out of the total count, public sector banks have opened 147 branches in the last three years with private sector banks opening 48 branches whereas regional rural banks opened 26 branches during FY14-17,” the official said.
As per the minutes of the financial inclusion implementation committee held on August 2014, and as per a detailed survey by SLBC, as many as 4,597 Gram Panchayats do not have banking facility. As on March 2017, the number got reduced to 4,253 GPs, he noted.
As on March 2017, 2000 GPs had brick and mortar commercial bank branches (including the private and RRBs with PSBs) within a five-km radius, whereas 2,185 GPs do not have bank branches but have BCs.
