RBI increases monetary ceiling of gold loans to Rs 400,000 for UCBs

In order to remove difficulties faced by the Urban Co-operative Banks (UCBs), the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has increased the monetary ceiling of gold loans under Bullet Repayment Scheme from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 4 lakh for UCBs to meet prescribed Priority Sector Lending (PSL) target, Ministry of Cooperation said on Monday.

The move is part of various initiatives taken under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the guidance of the Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Minister of Cooperation to strengthen cooperatives and treat them at par with other forms of economic entities, both as beneficiaries and participants.

The RBI on Friday announced the increase in the monetary ceiling of gold loans that can be granted under the bullet repayment scheme from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 4 lakh for UCBs who have met the overall PSL target and sub-targets as of March 31.

The Ministry of Cooperation recently had also taken another historic decision to provide funds to the registrar of cooperatives of states and Union Territories (UTs) and Agriculture and Rural Development Banks (ARDBs) by the Center for computerisation.

The total estimated expenditure for this scheme will be Rs 225.09 crore and it will enable people to quickly access services provided by the cooperative departments of the states and the offices of ARDBs as well as bring transparency and uniformity in the functioning of these offices, which will make them more efficient and save the time.

On the lines of the computerization scheme of all Primary Agriculture Credit Societies (PACS) in the country, a centrally sponsored scheme has been approved for the computerization of 1,851 units of ARDBs of 13 states through a national unified software and computerization of offices of Registrar of Cooperatives of all states and UTs similar to Central Registrar.