| News Details |
| Governor, RBI chairs the meeting of Bank officials at Leh | | 
Leh, May 03 (Scoop News)- In a historic moment, today the Governor of Reserve Bank of India, Dr. Raguram G Rajan chaired a town hall meeting in Leh. It was for the first time that a Governor of RBI has visited Leh to personally elicit from the people of the region their grievances, demands and to seek solutions and ideas from them. The meeting was attended by DC, Leh Prasanna Ramaswamy G, Regional Director RBI, J&K- Dambarudhar Sethy, Higher officials representing all the banks including J&K Bank, SBI, HDFC, PNB, Axis Bank, Officials from RBI Jammu office and local government officials, owners of small and micro industrial units and young entrepreneurs.
The objective of a Town Hall Meeting is to act as a forum to sensitize and bring together all relevant stakeholders including RBI, government line departments, entrepreneurs or industrialists and bank regulators to sort out issues, queries and grievances of local people and to educate them about the schemes, incentives and policy interventions of GoI and RBI. The town hall meeting in Leh was focused on Micro Small Medium Enterprises and an interactive session between the bankers and participants was the major highlight. A detailed power point presentation on MSMEs which is the second largest employment generation sector was also given to create awareness among the participants.
Dr. Raguram G Rajan called MSME the solution to address the biggest problem of unemployment. He said, “The government sector cannot create enough jobs to solve the unemployment problem but it has to be through small enterprises that’s growing big therefore employing more and more people.” He added that it’s the idea and not the credit that is required to start an enterprise and stressed on the need to find possibilities with relevance to local situation to exploit local capabilities, strengths, weaknesses and to look for opportunities for maximum deliverance of goods and services. He pointed out the need for technical assistance through expertise by organizations and banks and said that district administration can facilitate permissions to entrepreneurs, create clusters to form associations or cooperative units.
To avail credit facility from banks the Governor stressed on the need to give proof of concept to banks of viable business ideas. He also asked the banks to be more creative in providing loans and their easy repayments considering the high and low activity period in Leh due to geographical constraints. Highlighting the possibilities of entrepreneurship in Leh he emphasised on the potential to explore more tourism related activities, skill upgradation of SHGs, cater to local food products like horticulture products, pashmina, local handicrafts, ensuring high quality to target national or international markets. Talking of concerns regarding Leh he pointed out the need to improve access to finance, enhance environment for credit, address high transportation cost issues, storage capacity and sales. “Your ideas are the best ways to find solutions,” said Dr. Rajan and gave assurance to find ways to move forward by listing out the possibilities through concrete steps for implementation.
The DC, Leh pointed out the lack of coordination and information exchange between banks, administration and entrepreneurs/industrialists in Leh district. He requested the Governor, RBI to spell out clearly of roles and responsibilities of the district administration in terms of monitoring and coordinate banking activities. Citing example of women self help groups in Leh Ramaswamy highlighted the issue of accessibility to banking schemes and facilities and stressed on the need to have a coordinated system to divert resources offer by banks for productive uses and value addition for locals.
During the interactive session President Micro and Small Scale Industries, Leh put forth the problems faced by them and requested to raise the cash credit limits, simplify loan procedures, changes in repayment schedules, curtail interests on stocking, having nodal bank agency in Leh, etc considering the peculiarity of limited working season in the region.
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