Technology And Financial Literacy Programme Launched

Chief General Manager of NABARD, K.V. Raghavulu (third right), handing over client card to SHG members at a programme in Coimbatore on Tuesday. Harish Engineer, Executive Director of HDFC Bank (second right), is in the picture. With about four lakh self-help groups in the State, the focus should be on sustaining these groups rather than just increasing the number, according to K.V. Raghavulu, Chief General Manager of the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development.

Senior Vice-President of Micro Finance of the HDFC Bank K. Manohara Raj said that the bank had two models of micro financing.

Launching the technology and financial literacy programme of the HDFC Bank for self-help group (SHG) members here on Tuesday, he said that all banks were willing to finance in urban areas. In rural areas, though they were opening accounts, the villagers should operate the accounts and get loans. Tamil Nadu was second only to Andhra Pradesh in the number of SHGs. In an anxiety to increase the number of groups, the programme was getting diluted, he alleged. “While increasing the number of groups we are not following all the guidelines.” He suggested that the focus should be on sustaining the groups, maintaining the existing ones, training them and helping the members save.

Later, he told newsmen that the groups should become self-sustaining and should not disintegrate. Senior Vice-President of Micro Finance of the HDFC Bank K. Manohara Raj said that the bank had two models of micro financing. One was providing credit linkage to SHGs and the other was bulk bank linkage model. For the year ended March 2008, the bank had lent about Rs. 1,020 crore under the two models and covered about two million households. In two to three years, it planned to reach 10 million households.

The bank planned to launch mobile Automated Teller Machines. “On trial basis it will probably be launched in Coimbatore in a couple of months,” he said. The bank proposed to have totally 800 such machines. It had initiated market linkage programme for the products made by SHGs. The bank had four branches in the State dedicated to micro finance and planned to have four more.

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