West Bengal Finance, Commerce and Industry Minister, Amit Mitra, today urged banks to embrace technology to reach out to those "at the bottom of the pyramid" here in the State.
According to him, technologies like mobile wallets and new age banks like payments banks open new opportunities.
Payments banks, he said, can leverage the huge mobile user base in West Bengal including those in rural areas to provide services.
There are 69 million mobile users in West Bengal; while 36 million are in urban areas, the remaining 33 million are in rural areas. "The Reserve Bank of India has given licenses for 11 payments banks. West Bengal has 69 million mobile users with 33 million in rural areas. Banks will be able to leverage this user base to provide services including cashless transactions," Mitra said during a banking summit organised by the Indian Chamber of Commerce (ICC) today.
This apart, he urged banks to explore the option of mobile wallets and digital purses. This would lead to increase velocity of transactions.
He also asked banks to pass down the benefits of repo rate cuts by bringing down interest rates. "This will lead to increased propensity for loans thereby leading to increased GDP," Mitra said.
Improved CD Ratio
According to the Minister, at least seven districts in Bengal has seemed an improvement in the credit-deposit (CD) ratio.
Howrah with a 9.63 per cent growth; Uttar Dinajpur with a 6.45 per cent growth; Nadia (16.43 per cent); Murshidabad (8.53 per cent) and Malda (3.03 per cent) are some such districts.
"Traditionally, these were considered as backward districts. But, now the improved CD ratio shows there is entrepreneurship and increased economic activity there," he pointed out.
Promoting Start Ups
According to Mitra, the State has also taken active steps in promoting start-ups.
Apart from providing 10000 sq ft of space to have a "warehouse" (plug and play set up), it has also come up with a TV reality show "Egiye Bangla".
At least 1500 contestants with start-up ideas have applied for the reality show.
A corpus of Rs 200 cr is also available with the State Government. Mitra claimed that the provision to provide VC support to start-ups has been made out of the State Budget.