Public sector Dena Bank has
deployed an all women team of officers for recovery of outstanding loans and bad debts.
The decision was taken
after receiving complaints of alleged rough behaviour by some of the Bank field
staff assigned for recovery of loans.
Of the Bank's total
outstanding of about Rs 700 crore in Uttar Pradesh, bad debts amounted to Rs
200 crore, Dena Bank Chairman
and Managing Director Ashwani Kumar told Business Standard here.
He maintained that
recovery was a big task for the banking sector. "The proposal of forming
the all women team of loan recovery officers came from the women staff
themselves during the review of the Bank's performance in Lucknow Zone, which
comprises 33 districts."
Kumar said the women
officers' team would make field visits to villages and other places for the
recovery of loanspertaining housing,
retail segments and even agricultural segments.
Commenting on good
monsoon this year, he said rural demand for consumer durables and automobiles
was already up and there would be higher credit demand in the sectors of
infrastructure, power, road, mining, farm implement, warehousing, logistics
etc.
"The banks are bullish on
the various fiscal policy measures taken by the central government to boost
economic activities and entrepreneurship," he noted.
Meanwhile, Dena Bank had also
provisioned for losses occurring due to the conversion of loans to state power
distribution companies (discoms) into government bonds amounting to over Rs 350
crore.
Under the central scheme
of Ujjwal Discom Assurance Yojna (UDAY), the state government has issued bonds
worth almost Rs 40,000 crore to commercial banks, which effectively reduced the
debt of discoms by this
amount leaving merely Rs 15,000 crore worth of debt to be serviced by the
discoms.
However, the conversion
of loan amount to bonds have reduced the yield of Dena Bank by almost
2% to 9.70%, Kumar added. Dena Bank has 83
branches in UP with plans to launch more branches in future.
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