The government of Chhattisgarh has zeroed down that plan to merge all District Cooperative Central Banks (DCCBs) of the state into a single State Cooperative Bank, aiming to serve the farmers with better and efficient banking facilities, officials said.
The State cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister of Chhatisgarh Raman Singh gave the approval in this regard, a government public relation officer said.
In the meeting, Singh stressed that the merger of all branches of DCCBs will be one of the major financial reforms in the state.
“Cooperative banks play a significant role in paddy procurement and disbursements of short term agricultural loans to farmers and in view of this, in-principle decision was taken to transform it into a mega State Cooperative Bank (Apex bank) to ensure better banking services to farmers,” said Singh.
“After the decision, all DCCBs will be amalgamated into one state cooperative bank, which further will enact a strong financial infrastructure and emerge as a strong bank,” he said.
“Although all 264 branches of the DCCBs will continue to function in the state as same as earlier but from now on will give its services as a scheduled cooperative bank,” he added
“The decision will benefit the farmers and the interest rates will come down by another 1.5 to 2 percent on loans to them.This will directly affect the state governments interest subsidy, where it will be saving Rs 40-50 crore annually”, the chief minister said.
Besides this the farmers will be getting modernised bank facilities at the village level along with ATM and Micro ATM services.
“They can carry out transaction from any branch in any part of the state and very soon mobile banking and Internet banking facilities will be added,” he said.
“The working capital of the cooperative bank will cross over Rs 10,000 crore after the merger and the bank will have enough money for disbursement of agriculture loans,” he said.
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