Minister for Finance, Labour and Employment, Dr. Haseeb. A. Drabu today informed the House that the aggregate Credit Deposit Ratio during the last fiscal in respect of all banks operating in J&K State stood at 49.11% against the national average of 60%.Replying to a question by Mr. Davinder Singh Rana on behalf of Mr. M. Y. Tarigami, the Minister said that due to small agriculture land holdings in the State together with conversion of agricultural land for non-productive purposes, the ticket-size of bank lending under agriculture sector is very low.The Finance Minister further said that J&K lacks industrial growth and there are no big or medium industrial units operating in the state with the result the bank lending in the heavy and medium enterprise sector is negligible. He said that whatever bank lending takes place in the industrial sector, happens in small and micro enterprises, which is very small ticket lending.The Minister said that J&K State lacks basic infrastructure facilities like road network, inadequacy of power, poor telecom and railway connectivity etc which is one of the roadblocks in the development of industrial setup in the State.Dr. Drabu said that the Government has launched various employment generation and Poverty alleviation schemes for the un-employed youth and all the banks operating in the state are being constantly pursued to ensure substantial improvement in lending under the said schemes.
He said Financial Literacy Centers (FLCs) and Rural Self Employment Training Institutes (RSETI) have been set up in all the 22 districts of the state and out of it 10 RSETIs have been allocated to SBI and 12 allocated to J&K Bank. He said that in Kulgam district the FLC and RSETIs centers were established by J&K Bank and are functioning properly.The Minister said the Financial Inclusion Plan (FIP) Phase-I envisaged coverage of 795 identified un-banked villages having population than greater 2000 with ICT- based banking outlets. He said that these villages were allocated by J&K SLBC to 5 participating banks, viz J&K Bank, SBI, PNB, J&K Grameen Bank and Ellaquai Dehati Bank. He said that it included 76 villages of district Kulgam, against which 3 villages viz Tarigam Devsar Pahloo and Qasba-Khull were covered by opening of new bank branches and the rest 73 villages were covered through BC outlet.The Finance Minister further said that FIP-Phase-II envisaged coverage of 5582 identified unbanked villages having population more than 2000 in the State. He said that these villages were also allocated to the same 5 participating banks. He said that 139 villages covered through BC outlets and the remaining 57 villages stand covered through modes like mobile vans adding that both the plans have been accomplished successfully.
The Minister said that during the last two years maximum targets have been achieved under NRLM, NULM, SC, ST and OBC. He said that liabilities on account of GP Fund are not cleared in time due to absence of sufficient financial resources. He said that the Finance Department takes a cutoff date upto which the liabilities are cleared across the board in all the treasuries of the state and the liability on account of GPF has been cleared upto June 10, 2016. He said that the remaining liability shall be cleared as and when the resource position of the state improves.The Finance Minister informed that the government accorded sanction to the implementation of the projects in Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) mode under roads, tourism, housing, urban, sports, technical education, health, horticulture and industries and mining sectors. He further added that the sanction has been accorded for the creation of steering committee under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary to oversee, the selection, formulation and implementation of projects under PPP.