Comments
Kerala is set to become the first State in the country to achieve 100 per cent financial inclusion.
The formal announcement in this respect is expected to be made by the end of this month, according to Ms Archana S. Bhargava, Executive Director, Canara Bank.
15 villages
She said Canara Bank, which is the Convenor of the State Level Bankers Committee (SLBC), had already covered all the 15 villages allotted to it under the financial inclusion drive, either by appointing customer service providers or through opening of ‘brick and mortar' branches.
There are a total of 127 villages in the State and the other banks involved in the inclusion exercise have also committed to complete the task this month itself.
Ms Archana said that there are around six lakh villages in the country and only 30,000 of them have any kind of banking facilities.
Similarly, just about 40 per cent of the country's population have bank accounts.
Under the financial inclusion programme, Canara Bank has opened 32.25 lakh no-frill accounts, out of which 1.30 lakh accounts are in Kerala.
She said that the total business of Canara Bank had crossed Rs 5 lakh crore and the target for the year was Rs 6 lakh crore.
The bank opened 170 new branches in the last three months, of which, 100 were in backward and under-banked areas.
The plan was to open another 130 branches in the coming months, taking the total number of new branches to 300 in the current year.
Overseas branches
The bank will open an offshore branch in Bahrain in the next couple of months. Though the bank is holding licences to start branches in South Africa and Germany, it is waiting for the current global economic situation to ease up before going ahead.
It is also looking at the possibility opening branches in Brazil, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and a representative office in Japan.
Ms Archana said that Canara Bank was active in granting education loans and had so far given around Rs 4,000 crore through two lakh accounts.
In Kerala, the bank has disbursed Rs 830 crore under the head covering 38,000 accounts.
Comments
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.