The Centre today appointed Prakash Bakshi as the new chairman of the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard). Bakshi, currently the bank’s executive director, would be chairman for two and a half years till superannuation.
The additional secretary in the finance ministry, R K Singh, was holding additional charge of the Nabard chairman after incumbent Umesh Chandra Sarangi’s three-year term ended on December 2, 2010.
“My top priority will be to take Nabard’s repositioning exercise launched last year to a logical end. The repositioning exercise is to try and find new businesses for the bank in the wake of changing economic development and environment,” Bakshi told Business Standard.
Bakshi’s appointment comes at a time when the Maharashtra government superseded a 44-member board of directors of Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank (MSC Bank) on an advice from the Reserve Bank of India based on an inspection report by Nabard. Nabard, in its report, had disclosed the existence of several deficiencies in the functioning of MSC Bank.
Bakshi, who joined Nabard in 1979, has held several key positions before elevating to the executive director (ED) about two and a half years ago.
In his capacity as ED, Bakshi was in charge of development and microcredit and looking after Maharashtra, Gujarat and southern states.
The bank’s aggregate assets increased to Rs 1,59,147 crore as on March 31, against Rs 1,36,292 crore in the previous year. The production credit or crop loans to cooperative banks and regional rural banks stood at Rs 33,400 crore during 2010-11, as against Rs 24,216 crore a year ago (in terms of maximum outstandings).
