Banks need to increase lending to promote entrepreneurship: LG

Jammu, Mar 02: Asserting that banking sector is the backbone of J&K’s growing economy and collective efforts should be made to facilitate common man, farmers, industries, SHGs and young entrepreneurs, Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha on Thursday said the banks need to cooperate and complement government’s efforts in reaching out to beneficiaries of all flagship schemes.
Chairing a high-level meeting of Public Sector Banks, Administrative Departments & other Financial Institutions, today at Civil Secretariat, the Lt Governor directed the Public Sector Banks and other financial institutions for dedicated measures to ensure government benefits directly reach the people and put greater emphasis on lending for potential entrepreneurs, farmers, SHGs and rural development.
“This situation needs to change. All the Banks must increase the lending to promote entrepreneurship amongst youth, women and people from marginalised sections of society,” the Lt Governor further said.
Meanwhile, the Lt Governor reviewed the action taken on the directions passed in the previous meeting on seamless credit to potential entrepreneurs and saturation of other government schemes aimed to facilitate the dreams of aspiring society.
He also observed that during the Back to Village-4 and My Town My Pride Programme, J&K Bank ensured a major share of 90% in extending the financial support to 75,000 youth recently, while other banks had merely 10 % contribution.
The Lt Governor also reviewed the progress achieved to extend the benefits of Kisan Credit Cards to all the eligible farmers.
The banks were instructed to follow the delivery channels of RBI and saturate the distribution of Smart Cards to the KCC account holders by June, 2023.
The Lt Governor emphasized on support and guidance to the farmers in preparing project reports required by the banks through nodal agencies. He also emphasized on holding regular meetings at the district level with mission youth & other government departments to understand requirements of diverse sectors, the Lt Governor added.
The Chair was also briefed on the upcoming ‘Citizen’s portal for Government Sponsored Schemes’. The soon to be launched portal, prepared by J&K Bank will ensure that all the Banks operating in Jammu Kashmir seamlessly extend all the benefits of government schemes to the eligible beneficiaries.
The portal will enable a citizen to apply for a Government Sponsored Schemes directly online with OTP Authentication and check the status of his/her application online.
It will forward/route the applications from citizens to appropriate departments & teams in an integrated workflow and enable departments & teams to process and forward/route these applications to the concerned financing agencies.
Further the financing agencies can update status for these applications post processing. It will also facilitate generation of MIS/Reporting Dashboards, it was informed.
Directions were passed to explore possibilities to integrate all the schemes and other portals on a single platform and make the portal more interactive, multilingual and having a module of grievances redressal mechanism.
Dr Arun Kumar Mehta, Chief Secretary;Atal Dulloo, Additional Chief Secretary, Agriculture Production Department; Sh Baldev Prakash, MD & CEO J&K Bank; Administrative Secretaries; HODs, Heads and representatives of several banks operating in the UT attended the meeting.