Tardy progress in financial inclusion plan for Orissa

The implementation of the 'Financial Inclusion Plan' in Orissa for villages with a population of over 2000 (2001 Census) appears to be on the backburner.

Despite the identification of as many as 1878 villages in the state in the last meeting of the State Level Bankers' Committee (SLBC) held on March 18 this year, not a single village has been identified by the banks so far for providing banking services to the people either through opening of branches or through the Banking Correspondent model.

In its meeting held on Monday, the SLBC expressed dismay over the fact that no report has been received in respect of the holding of sub-committee meeting of the District Coordination Committee of any district on the progress made by the banks on the implementation of the 'Financial Inclusion Plan (FIP)'.

Monthly progress reports of FIP of each district has to be submitted to SLBC for onward transmission to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Union ministry of finance. Banks have been slack in the implementation of the plan despite the reminders of the RBI to send information on FIP on a monthly basis.

In the wake of the tardy progress made on the implementation of FIP, Lead Development Managers (LDMs) of the thirty districts and the controlling heads of all the banks operating in the state have been instructed by the SLBC to do the needful in this connection.

State Bank of India (SBI) has been allocated the most number of villages (466) in the state for providing banking services followed by UCO Bank (174), Union Bank of India (79) and Indian Overseas Bank (59). As per the roadmap for Financial Inclusion prepared by the RBI, all unbanked villages across the country with a population exceeding 2000 were to be offered banking services on or before March 2011.