KVGB launches 'recovery counselling centres'

The Karnataka Vikas Grameena Bank (KVGB) has started ‘Recovery Counselling Centers’ across all its regional offices to provide a major boost to recovery of long-pending arrears.

The move is likely to benefit the bank in general and the defaulters in particular, said KVGB Chairman Sambasiva Reddy.

Inaugurating the first Recovery Counselling Center and the Recovery Counseling Cluster campaign here on Monday, he said the bank has been increasing credit flow to priority sectors every year. Though the sector was showing satisfactory progress, the recovery rate from the sector was not encouraging due to the changed mindset of borrowers.

The increase in NPAs in the banking sector is a matter of concern he added. Through the recovery counselling centres and campaign, officers are involving themselves in changing the mindset of borrowers, especially defaulters and will also help in settling their overdue accounts by ‘Raji Adalat’ or through ‘One Time Settlement’.

The Recovery Counselling campaign started on November 1 across all 481 branches in the nine districts under the bank’s jurisdiction. During the campaign period, a team of five to 10 members will visit every defaulters’ houses. “Each regional office is appointing one nodal officer to monitor the situation,” the chairman said.

Farmers, who have been identified as beneficiaries under the Agriculture and Rural Debt Relief Scheme (ARDRS) of the Union government, but, not taken the benefit before the time limit will be given special consideration under the bank’s own scheme.