Thaindian News

Agartala, May 5 (IANS) The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will set up offices in all northeastern states for better monitoring of banking services in the region, a senior official said here Thursday.

Currently, RBI only has a regional office in Assam’s main city Guwahati.

“After Guwahati, the first sub-office would start functioning in the Tripura capital Agartala May 18. Subsequently, sub-offices would be opened in other northeastern states in a phased manner,” a senior RBI official told reporters.

RBI Governor D. Subbarao will inaugurate the sub-office in Agartala May 18. The central board meeting of the country’s apex bank would also be held in Agartala next day (May 19), the RBI’s first board meeting in the region.

“After the opening of RBI offices in the northeast region, the monitoring and functioning of nationalised, regional rural banks and private banks would be further improved,” Tripura Finance and Public Works Development Minister Badal Choudhury told reporters.

“We have been demanding more RBI offices in the region for the past 12 years to improve the credit deposit ratio, providing advances and financial support to the people of the region,” said the minister, who recently held a meeting with the RBI governor in Mumbai.

He complained that the credit flow to the northeastern region from nationalised banks was meagre.

“It is unfortunate that despite intervention from the union finance ministry, the credit-deposit ratio for commercial banks in the region has remained at a level of around 30 percent over the past many years. This should be raised to at least 50 percent by 2010-11,” Chowdhury said.

The minister urged nationalised banks to open more branches in rural areas to curb the illegal collection of deposits by non-banking financial companies (NBFC).

Quoting RBI guidelines, Choudhury said the central bank had asked all nationalised banks to open banking services, in any form, in every village in the country with a population of over 2,000.