Oriya drama Dhadi Ramayana being staged in Rourkela drama fest, which ended on Sunday. Fifteen plays were staged at the festival that began on May 29. The event was organised by the Rourkela Steel Plant. Picture by Uttam Kumar Pal

Bhubaneswar, June 13: Union Bank of India (UBI) today assured the state government that it would continue to focus on the development of the state’s agrarian economy.

UBI chairman and managing director M.V. Nair today called on chief minister Naveen Patnaik and assured him of his bank’s help to develop the state.

Nair said: “For developing the village and creating employment skills for the people, the bank is planning to adopt five more villages as union adarsh gram (model village). It also proposes to open three new village knowledge centres in Orissa.”

At present, the bank has one such model village atBarhguda in Baragarh district.

As part of the project, the bank helps the villagers to develop their village in an integrated manner and looks after the village’s overall socio-economic development.

It proposes to adopt five model villages — Samkhoi and Karaberani in Angul district, Kuntakhai in Koraput and Annapal and Siaria in Keonjhar district.

Similarly, village knowledge centres will be opened in Dhenkanal, Purushottampur and Nabarangpur.

Now the bank has three such centres in Angul, Balakukuli and Jajpur to serve as information dissemination centres providing instant access to farmers to latest information and knowledge available in the field of agriculture, starting from crop production to marketing.

Nair said that the bank is focusing on providing credit to agricultural sector, rice mills, handlooms, handi-crafts and industrial sectors like steel and mining. He said, “The bank has been allotted 30 villages having population of over 2000 in Orissa for coverage with banking facilities by March 2012.”