Bhubaneswar: Bankers in Odisha are going to achieve 1 lakh crore priority sector lending in 2020-21.
The State finance minister Niranjan Pujari revealed this at the Nabard State Credit Seminar, held here on Monday.
The State finance minister congratulated the banking sector in advance towards achieving the priority sector lending target of Rs.1,00,000 crore for FY21.
Speaking on the occasion, Pujari emphasized upon increasing the agriculture term loan finance in allied sector activities such as animal husbandry, poultry, fisheries leading to asset formation and diversification of the income basket of farmers. He also advised RBI and all the bankers to increase their banking outreach in unbanked areas of the state in order to help the State government in effective implementation of various developmental programmes and also increase the scope of digital banking and FI across the State. He emphasized the need of a coordinated support from all the stakeholders to make Odisha a leading State in Indian economy.
Principal.secretary finance Ashok Meena, however, pointed out that the share of bank credit in the GSDP of the State much below than the contribution of credit to the national level GDP. Stating that Odisha has been performing consistently well compared to the national level GDP, he said this reflects that while state is doing its best and banks have large scope to enhance its partnership in the progress. He advised Banks to double the credit assistance being given to the SHGs.
