Agartala, July 1: In a bid to pressure nationalised banks to improve their credit-deposit (CD) ratio in Tripura, the state government has threatened to deprive them of bulk deposits of government funds if they could not achieve growth.

This was made clear by finance commissioner D.K. Tyagi during a recent meeting of the state-level banks committee (SLBC) held here. ?Unless you improve the CD ratio and advance loans to bonafide applicants sponsored by the state government, we will be left with no other alternative but to deprive you of deposits of government funds,? Tyagi, who represented the state government, told the bank officials present at the meeting.

He said the current CD ratio of 35 per cent was an improvement on the earlier dismal ratio of only 23 per cent in 1998, but it was far below the national CD ratio of 56 per cent. The SLBC meeting was followed by a high-level review meeting attended by chief minister Manik Sarkar, finance minister Badal Chowdhury, chief secretary R.K. Mathur, finance commissioner Tyagi and chairman-cum-managing director of the United Bank of India (UBI) P.K. Gupta. The UBI is the leading bank in Tripura.

Official sources said Tyagi had pointed out during the review meeting that loans advanced by the nationalised banks in Tripura was far below the target for the last fiscal in the agriculture sector.

?There are 1.12 lakh farmers in Tripura, but even 25 per cent of them have not been covered by loans despite having filed applications for them,? Tyagi said, adding that the banks were dragging their feet even in distribution of Kisan Credit Cards.

The chief minister said the government had drawn up a scheme to make the state self-reliant in food production within a decade and unless the nationalised banks came forward to sanction loans, the implementation of the ambitious scheme would suffer.

State government officials also pointed out that deposits in all nationalised banks in Tripura were rising sharply every year, but the capital was being ?repatriated? instead of being invested in the state. They expressed resentment over the reluctance of the banks to sanction loans under state-sponsored schemes.

The UBI chairman said projects submitted by entrepreneurs in Tripura are ?mostly found to be defective and nonviable? and by financing such projects, banks would jeopardise repayment and the entrepreneurs themselves would be in trouble. Gupta, however, assured that he would try to convince the nationalised banks to devise ways and means of improving CD ratio by investing more in the state.