Pranab to review performance of public sector banks

New Delhi, July 7: Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee will review the annual performance of public sector lenders and financial institutions in a meeting with their heads here on Friday, Jul 8.

"The Finance Minister will do the annual review of public sector banks' performance in different sectors including flow of agriculture credit, micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) credit, disbursement of housing loans and education loans among others", a Finance Ministry statement said.

The Government had set a target of Rs 4,75,000 crore for agriculture credit for 2011-12 fiscal as against the target of Rs 3,75,000 crore during FY 2010-11.

The agriculture credit outgo in 2010-11 fiscal stood at Rs 4,46,778.98 crore, thus exceeding the target by Rs 71,778.98 crore or 19 per cent.

Moreover, 5.50 crore farm loan accounts were financed during the same period, which is an increase of 14.11 per cent in number of farm accounts and 16.19 per cent in the amount of loans disbursed.

Under the Kisan Credit Card (KCC) Scheme, banks have issued 9.81 crore such cards as on December 31, 2010.

Besides, the total outstanding loans of PSBs for education as on March 31, 2011 stood at Rs 43,074 crore in 22,35,532 accounts.

Issues related to infrastructure lending, implementation of interest subsidy schemes for housing the urban poor and lending to minority communities will also come up for discussion and review during the meeting.

PTI