Industrial clusters to boost credit demand

In tune with the West Bengal government's plans to set up 17 industrial clusters in the state, banks have enhanced the credit target to the micro and small enterprises to Rs 9,000 crore, a rise of almost 25 per cent over the last year.

This was approved at the state level bankers' committee, attended by Amit Mitra, finance minister of West Bengal with bankers yesterday.

This apart, for medium and small enterprises, the credit target has been set at about Rs 6000 crore.

The new government has decided to set up 17 industrial clusters to boost growth of small and medium scale industries. The land for the clusters will be identified by the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC).

This apart, banks have sought land for Rural Self Employment Training Institute (RSETI), as at present out of the 19 such institutes, 18 are run on rented spaces. RSETIs are a programme of Ministry of Rural Development for training rural youths and below poverty line persons for self-employment. These are bank-led institutions, which are managed and run by public sector and private banks with co-operation of state governments. The land for the institutes are to be provided by the state government.

“State finance minister also asked banks to increase agriculture loans by the banks, mainly through banking correspondent model. Also banks were directed to cover villages with more than 2000 population with banking facility by 2012,” said a bank official.

Last year SLBC West Bengal, had identified 7486 numbers of unbanked villages for providing banking outlets with in March 2012.

According to data available at the SLBC, West Bengal, website, the credit deposit ratio of the state improved from 61 per cent at the end of Dec 2009 to 64 per cent at the end of March 2010.

The overall disbursement by the banks under annual credit plan 2009-10 was Rs 21286 crore, which was 102% of the target. Achievement during 2008-09 was 99 per cent of the target of Rs 15860 crore.