BENGALURU, Feb 5: The recent trend of remitting subsidies to various sectors, including that of in Agriculture, Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) will ensure a sustainable income to the beneficiaries and would phase out the Farm Loan Waiver Scheme, State Bank of India Chief Rajinish Kumar, said here on Monday.
Addressing newsmen here, Mr Kumar, while welcoming the decision of the Union Government to remit Rs 6000 to every farmers account every year regularly, he said that it will ensure that the farmers receive an assured income. Maintaining that the trend of DBT scheme is going to stay in the coming days, he said that The Telangana, West Bengal and Orissa State governments have already switched over to DBT scheme and the Union Government also had joined the bandwagon, it’s a good sign.
With the advent of the DBT regime, we can do away the Loan Waiver Scheme and we are in the last leg of the farm Loan Waiver regime he added. Opining that the Farm Distress was largely due to falling Agri products prices and the vagaries of nature, he said that by ensuring a quantum of assured income regularly to the farmers the negative trend in the farm sector can be reversed.
Replying to a question, Mr Kumar said that the Banking Industry in the country is doing well and clocking a 16 per cent growth annually.
The growth is coming from Housing Loan, Agriculture lending, MSME and Government sector lending for Port, Roads and other logistic areas.
Referring to the Banks exposure to Aviation, Real Estate and Corporate credit, he said that Our loans are standarised, secured and robust.
Referring to lending to Jet Airways, he said that as of now there is no any concern, it is flying he added.
Stating that the Bank has taken several initiatives towards digitalisation of all its operations, he said that the recent launch of YONO, an integrated digital and lifestyle platform by SBI is gaining popular and witnessing about one crore downloads with over three 3 lakh logins per day. The number of SBI customers using internet banking facility are over 5.5 crore and the number of customers engaged with the mobile banking services of SBI stands at 1.25 crore.
The SBI customers, will get more number of services from April this year, from the YONO platform, benefiting Global trotters and Farmers, he added. (UNI)
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