Coimbatore Collector tells bankers to treat education loans as national investment:

Updated on: Wednesday, April 04, 2012

Mr M. Karunakaran, District Collector of Coimbatore, urged bankers to concentrate on education loans and look at the education loan portfolio as a national investment instead of considering it as an unrewarding advance.

He made this remark after unveiling the Annual Credit Plan for 2012-13, which envisages 18 per cent growth over the earlier year's outlay of Rs 5,315 crore.

While congratulating bankers for surpassing the targets during the earlier years, he said, “The 29 per cent growth in the education loan portfolio up to December 2011 at Rs 735.83 crore from Rs 569.78 crore as on December 2010 is not commensurate with the student population in this district.”

He added that he received at least 25–30 complaints from loan applicants during the Grievance Day meetings. “The public is voicing concern about select banks' indifferent attitude to their request,” Mr Karunakaran said and appealed to the bankers to sanction the loan without delay or share the reason for rejecting the application.

The number of educational loans sanctioned during the current fiscal up to March 5, 2012 totalled 6,952, amounting to Rs 142.82 crore.

The District Collector observed that this was rather low as compared with the number of students undergoing various programmes across different colleges in this region.

While the education loan portfolio grew 29 per cent, advances to priority credit up to December 2011 was 38.68 per cent — well below the RBI norm of 40 per cent and the State average of 39.47 per cent.

Credit to agriculture was also pathetic at 10.99 per cent against the RBI norm of 18 per cent. The Micro and Small Enterprises (MSE) credit was however higher at 16.96 per cent.

The Collector said that small farmers were a neglected lot and appealed to bank officials to give more thrust to such people. The credit plan outlay for 2012-13 at Rs 6,250 crore envisages an increase of 21.33 per cent for the agri and allied sectors, up from Rs 1,870 crore to Rs 2,269 crore, a 14.81 per cent increase in the SME sector at Rs 2,690 crore and an outlay of Rs 1,291 crore towards other priority sector credit, up from Rs 1,102 crore in 2011-12.

Coimbatore Collector tells bankers to treat education loans as national investment:

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