Deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi at the Assembly on Monday. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, March 26: Deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi today said the state government would not deposit its money in the banks not meeting the benchmark vis-a-vis loan disbursement target.

Replying to a question of Durga Prasad Singh during the question hour, Modi said: “In order to boost the credit flow, the state government has devised a four-point parameter. The banks have to score a minimum of 33 marks against their performance under four heads, including Kisan Credit Card (KCC) loan, credit-deposit (CD) ratio, agriculture loan and priority sector lending. The new norm would be applicable from April 1 this year. ”

Modi, who also holds finance portfolio, said the banks would get 20 marks if their CD ratio is above 30 per cent, three marks for achieving 40 per cent of the KCC target and five marks each for achieving 75 and 80 per cent of agriculture and priority sector lending targets, respectively.

Admitting that banks had not fared well vis-à-vis loan disbursement of dairy, fisheries and poultry, Modi said: “We do not have the power to penalise the banks for their failure to distribute loans according to the target. At the best, we can put pressure on them.”

Opposition leader Abdul Bari Siddiqui, who interrupted the finance minister during his reply, suggested the government not to deposit its money for five years in the banks hesitating in disbursing loans, particularly in the agriculture sector.

Modi said the government had already imposed a ban on depositing its money in private banks whose track record regarding CD ratio is bad.

While making comparative analysis with the other states’ CD ratio, Modi admitted that Bihar was much below Odisha and Assam. Bihar’s CD ratio is 33.42 per cent whereas that of Odisha and Assam stood at 70.32 per cent and 44.52 per cent, respectively.

Replying to another question by Manjit Kumar Singh during the question hour, Modi said the villages with more than 5,000 population would have branches of public sector banks by September this year.

Teaching posts

Replying to a call attention motion, education minister P.K. Shahi said the government would soon fill up the category-wise backlog of teaching posts in colleges and universities once the rationalisation process was complete. Shahi said the actual number of vacancies would be known only after the completion of the rationalisation process.