Minister for Roads and Buildings and Legislative Affairs V. Prashanth Reddy has expressed displeasure over the poor grounding of self-employment units sanctioned under different schemes and asked the government authorities concerned and bankers to coordinate with each other for fast grounding.
Bankers should feel it as their social responsibility to extend financial assistance to candidates selected by government departments for the self-employment units, he said, cautioning that the delay in implementation and rejection would cost society dearly. “If all the poorer sections come out of poverty, their families would be happy and society at large would be peaceful. The national economy would also get strengthened. Otherwise, the apathy would lead to unrest,” he warned.
Attending a meeting of the District Level Review Committee (DLRC) of bankers as chief guest here on Friday, he said though the units were being grounded, satisfactory results were not achieved. Hence, poverty continued to play its role to pull back the economic progress, he said and suggested that bankers ensure 100 per cent grounding and functioning of units.
Mr. Prashanth Reddy said bankers had better not insist on beneficiaries depositing the loan sanctioned against their previous debts. That would not serve any purpose, he said.
Congratulating the Andhra Bank management on grounding all 108 units as against their target of 115, he hoped that the rest of banks would emulate it. He reminded bankers that as per the RBI guidelines they need to provide a minimum of 18 per cent of their total lending to the agriculture sector. However, some banks did provide far below the said per cent in the rabi, he said.
Collector M. Ram Mohan Rao, MLCs V. G. Goud and Akula Lalitha, ZP chairman D. Vithal Rao, district lead bank manager Jaya Santhoshi and zonal and district heads of nationalised banks and district authorities participated.
