Priority sector advances target increased in Karnataka: CM

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah today said the target under Priority Sector Advances (PSA) for the state has been increased to Rs 73,362 crore as against the achievement of Rs 60,559 crore in the previous fiscal under the Annual Credit Plan for 2013-14.
Addressing the 124th State Level Bankers' Committee meeting here, he pitched for achieving more than the benchmark level stipulated by the Reserve Bank of India in PSA. "We believe that PSA have a large multiplier impact on economy and assist in employment generation," he said.
The Chief Minister said growth was expected due to copious rains, and wanted the banking sector to provide adequate credit for production and focus on long-term investment credit.

He expressed happiness over Karnataka having 8,430 bank branches with 3,295 of them located in rural areas, but said this has not resulted in increased flow of credit.
"While our neighbours, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, have maintained Credit Deposit (CD) ratio in the range of 117-120 per cent, our ratio is just about 75 per cent only," he said.
Even in case of rural areas, Siddaramaiah said the state's CD ratio barely manages to cross 100 per cent, while Tamil Nadu has been able to achieve 132 per cent and Andhra Pradesh 173 per cent.

"We need to change this trend to ensure higher credit flow to economy in general and to rural economy in particular," he said.

He said progress in issue of Kissan Credit Cards (KCC) in the state was low with only 7.98 lakh cards issued in 2012-13 as against target of 11 lakh cards, which impedes the progress of deepening the credit line and credit availability for farmers.
Siddaramaiah urged banks to speed up the process of integrating Aadhaar numbers with bank accounts for pensions and MGNREGA disbursements under Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) scheme.
"The transaction levels are not very encouraging. The efforts by banks and government should be synergised to enable successful rollout of Direct Benefit Transfer scheme in all districts," he said.