The Congress govt was better than the BJP government as it did a lot for the cooperative sector putting an experienced and knowledgeable cooperator Sharad Pawar at the helm of the cooperative affairs, said Manjunatha T. Kanchan CEO of Mahanagar Cooperative bank to this correspondent recently in Mumbai.
Earlier also, in course of interaction with cooperators across board Indian Cooperative has gathered there are many cooperators owing allegiance to BJP who feel the cooperative sector has a great champion in Sharad Pawar. And it’s a matter of record that the crucial 97th amendment was introduced in Pawar time only.
BJP has singularly failed to pull this important piece of legislation out of legal tangle it is presently caught, said many BJP cooperators on condition of anonymity.
Coming to Mahanagar Co-op Bank the CEO said “The government should give due importance to the cooperative sector banks as they are working to uplift the poor. Non-cooperative banks have a different approach to banking”, he added.
Manjunatha claimed his bank has adopted advanced technologies such as RTGS, CBS, NIFT and the like. He wanted Reserve Bank of India to give permission for the Internet banking facility.
Highlighting the history of the bank, CEO said the founder Chairman Late Shri Gulabrao Shelke established a cooperative society with his friends which subsequently grew as “Ahmednagar Cooperative Bank” at Mumbai in 1973 but after some time the name of the bank was changed to “The Mahanagar Cooperative Bank Ltd”. The bank got the scheduled bank status in 1998.
The bank has a network of 67 branches with 52 ATMs across Maharashtra with 65 thousand members.
The bank has earned a net profit of about Rs 18 crore in the fiscal 2016-17 and targeted to achieve a business mix of more than 5 thousand crore in the next financial year, Manjunatha said optimistically.
“We have faced several challenges in the wake of demonetization. The repayment of loan from the borrowers was a
major issue and now the members are not willing to take loan. For tackling this situation we have slashed our Interest rate and have promised to give better services to the members”, he said.
Manjunatha also patted himself on the back by claiming “We have helped smaller urban cooperative banks at the time of demonetization.”
Queried about giving loans to directors, Manjunatha said ”we are not providing any loans to the bank directors because it is against the Reserve Bank of India norms. If we give loan to directors, re-payment of loans turns out to be a major challenge”.
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BJP Govt. should remove this blemish by merging many cooperative banks which are under RBI restrictions, in to some nationalised banks and the depositors are suffering being no faults of their. It is since 5 years Rupee co operative and other banks are under restrictions and no concrete decision is taken by the BJP govt. to resolve the issue, probably like farmers suicide attempts they are waiting for bank depositors to suicide so that the problem will be solved automatically without any actions.