Banks should nurture more SHGs

The banks should encourage and nurture more and more self-help groups (SHG), particularly that of the women and poor, and they should be credit-linked, Bank of Maharashtra's (BoM) Chairman and Managing Director, Mr M D Mallaya said here.

He said that the Bank of Maharashtra would bolster the SHGs by opening more branches in rural areas and also sensitise its personnel on extending maximum help to this category of customers.

Mr Mallaya was speaking as chief guest at a function organised by NABARD to give away its state-level best performance awards under the SHG Bank Linkage Programme for 2005-06.

"The banks should not be hesitant in helping the SHGs formed by the poor. The poor are the potential customers of the banks and their needs are also not much. Besides they are bankable and good borrowers," Mr Mallaya said, expressing the hope that Mahara shtra would improve its position to fourth place among other states with regard to the formation of SHGs.

The SHG Bank Linkage Programme, launched in 1992 as an experiment in providing hassle-free institutional credit to rural poor, has achieved phenomenal success over the last 14 years, NABARD claimed.

According to NABARD, in Maharashtra during 2005-06 it (the programme) reached a new height with credit linkage of 60,324 new SHGs, a growth of 85 per cent over the previous year.