Banking fails to reach 78 per cent in Gulbarga

Nearly 78 per cent of Gulbarga district's population remain outside the ambit of banking. Despite 100 years of banking in the country, banking has not reached 49 per cent of the population.

This was revealed by RBI General Manager V Vasantan at a function at Mummigatti village, off Dharwad, recently.

The function was to mark the 100 per cent coverage of families in the village by Karnataka Vikas Grameena Bank under the 'Vikasa Janata SB Account Scheme'.

Vasantan said that in Karnataka Gulbarga, Davanagere, Chitradurga and Kolar remained backward in banking.

The Centre and RBI had taken a serious note of this and took steps to bring the entire nation under banking in the next three years. For the benefit of the poor a 'No-Frills Account' has been introduced wherein the account can be opened with zero balance.

The banks have been instructed to issue passbooks to account holders free of charges, he stated.

Vasantan admitted that though several measures were introduced to save the poor from the clutches of money lenders not much headway could be achieved.

KVG Bank chairman M Dhananjay said the KVGB had opened over 1.16 lakh accounts in last two months. The bank will concentrate on women's empowerment in the days to come.