Bedevilled by the stagnation in demand for credit and the possibility of a rise in non-performing assets due to distress across sectors of the economy, public sector banks have launched upon an exercise to engage their staff in the process of shoring up business turnover.
The exercise, put in place as per the dictat of the Department of Financial Services, Government of India, is expected to form the base of a prescription the Government may write to address the woes of the country’s banking sector.
This was a first of its kind consultation and ideation process by Public Sector Banks where the branches were themselves asked to review their performance, deliberate on the issues before the banking sector and indicate on future strategies and the way ahead. The deliberations were focused on various discussion points involving credit growth in various sectors of economy, usage of technology to bring about innovation and enable big data analytics, and make banking citizen-centric as well as more responsive to the needs and aspirations of senior citizens, farmers, small industrialists, entrepreneurs, youth, students and women.
Pune headquartered Bank of Maharashtra held two such meetings including one for its Pune City Zone and another for Pune East Zone. Bank of Baroda held a meet of its Pune Zone comprising branches in Pune and Solapur districts.
The consultations were held over a period of two days from August 18-19. The initiative was driven to seek ways and means available to increase credit to various sectors of the economy, enhance use of technology to bring about innovation and enable big data analytics and make banking citizen-centric as well as more responsive to the needs and aspirations of senior citizens, farmers, small industrialists, entrepreneurs, youth, students and women.
The meets reviewed the banks’ performance and its alignment with national priorities in the areas such as credit support for economic growth, infrastructure / industry, farm sector and blue economy, Jal Shakti, MSME sector and Mudra loans, education loans, export credit, green economy, Swachh Bharat, financial inclusion and women empowerment, direct benefit transfers, less cash / digital economy, ease of living, alignment with local priorities and corporate social responsibility.
As a result of the initiative, a number of implementable and innovative suggestions have been arrived on how PSBs may improve their performance. The consultations for generation of ideas was conducted in a bottoms-up process, which will be further discussed at the SLBC / state level and final consultations will be held  at the national level, to compare both, intra and inter-bank performances, for way ahead implementation across PSBs.
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