Hyderabad: Bhatti Vikramarka Mallu, Telangana Deputy Chief Minister and Minister of Finance and Power on Monday applauded  the efforts of banks in achieving various targets and sought the banks to continue achieving the targets set for the current Financial Year as well. Speaking at the 46th quarterly review meeting of the State Level Bankers’ Committee (SLBC), Telangana at Praja Bhavan, Minister Bhatti Vikramarka advised banks to achieve commercial goals along with social goals with human touch.

He appealed to the banks to be magnanimous in focusing more on extending credit to agriculture, weaker sections and SHGs. He also sought support from all banks in timely delivery of credit.  Further, he asked the banks to focus on Horticulture, Palm Oil activities, Agriculture Infrastructure Fund credit. On this occasion, the Deputy Chief Minister conveyed that the state government has come out with a major housing scheme for constructing 4.50 lakh houses to weaker sections with a project cost of Rs.5.00 Lakh per house.

He appealed to all the banks for actively participating in the houses scheme and extend housing finance to beneficiaries under the priority sector lending.  M Raghunandan Rao, Secretary (Agriculture), advised bankers to have focus on loans to farm mechanisation and other activities pertaining to investment credit.  He appealed to the bankers for extending end to end loans throughout the life cycle of oil palm cultivation from sowing to production of final product.