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The Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, Mr N. Kiran Kumar Reddy, has said that the Women Cooperative Finance Corporation could work as a nodal agency for mid-way financing of women self-help groups, with the State Government providing working capital to meet this requirement.
Following a meeting the Chief Minister had with the chief executives of the banks during the SLBC meeting held last week, he assured them the State Government would stand by them to ensure the recovery of the loans extended to the women SHGs .
While banks have honoured their commitment under the SHG bank linkage programme by lending Rs 7,082 crore against the targeted Rs 7,053 crore, there is still a vast scope to improve the coverage. The Chief Minister wanted the bankers and the Indira Kranthi Pathakam team to gear up for achieving the SHG bank linkage target of Rs 9,082 crore during 2011-12, and that the banks should strive to increase the average loan size to a group from the present Rs 1.8 lakh to Rs 2.5 lakh.
In a statement from the Chief Minister's Office, Mr Reddy said he expected a more pro-active role by the banks in helping the women SHGs, in the light of the marginalised role of the MFIs in the State. In Andhra Pradesh, banks have financed 16.90 lakh SHGs with an outstanding amount of Rs 13,153 crore as on March 31, 2011, that covered over 1.20 crore rural and urban women population.
RBI regulatory guidelines
According to the statement, the RBI is in the process framing regulatory guidelines on the other recommendations of the Malegam Committee.
According to the new proposals, MFIs will have to initiate requisite organisational capacity building exercise to enable them conform to various guidelines.
NIRD
NIRD (national institute of rural development) is of the opinion that the total financial assistance given to the poor cannot be serviced by the prevailing structure. Instead, some strategic intervention like Public-Private Partnership is needed throughout the country.
It felt that there is a now a greater need to take a fresh look into the credit requirement of the people living in rural areas to meet their consumption and personal needs based upon the household income criteria.
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