Co-op Push for Loans to Continue
CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government expressed its intention to continue its push of the past three years in increasing the role of the cooperative system as a source of credit and loans. As part of the 2014-15 outlook for the sector, Cooperation Minister Sellur K Raju outlined a number of measure that the government would take to improve on the over-performance of 2013-14.
For instance, the target for disbursement of crop loans for 2013-14 had been set at Rs 4,500 crore, but the actual disbursement achieved was at Rs 4,716.16 loans.
The target for the current year has been set at Rs 5,000 crore. The growth outlook for the sector was apparent in all of its various arms. Urban Co-operative Banks, which had disbursed loans of Rs 6,221.31 crore in 2013-14, have now been given a target of Rs 8,382 crore. Loans to Self-Help Groups, clocking Rs 488.5 crore in 2013-14, are now targeted to touch Rs 615 crore. Even the target for micro credit (loans of up to Rs 10,000) has been raised to Rs 170 crore from the Rs 151.71 crore given out in 2013-14.
The AIADMK government’s vision of shoring up the once-flailing co-operative sector as an alternative to commercial and mainstream banks was apparent in the kind of projects that Raju said would be taken up in 2014-15. A number of these projects are aimed at widening the scope of services, improving existing services, overall modernisation and an improvement in the atmosphere of these institutions, all with the constantly quoted yardstick of being ‘on par with commercial and private banks’.