New Delhi: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has once again urged the public sector banks to launch special campaigns to collect more deposits from the general public. The Finance Minister made this special request in a meeting with the heads of public sector banks on Monday. She had made a similar request in a meeting with the RBI on Saturday last week. This reflects the concern of the Finance Ministry that the pace of loan disbursal in the country's banking sector is very fast while the pace of deposit collection is not increasing at that pace.

For the last few months, the pace of loan disbursal in the banking sector has remained three to four percent more than the deposit collection. Many experts have said in recent times that the gap between the assets and liabilities of banks is increasing, the brunt of which the banks may have to suffer in the future. The Finance Minister also held a separate meeting with the heads of Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) on Monday.

Run special campaign to increase deposits

The Finance Minister has asked the bank chiefs to launch special campaigns to raise more deposits and also try to improve customer facilities and try to attract customers from rural and semi-urban areas in particular. Efforts should be made at the level of bank employees to come forward to establish contact with customers. Banks should establish more cooperation among themselves in this regard.

If a bank has achieved success in raising deposits, that experience should be shared with other banks. As far as possible, the use of technology should also be encouraged in this regard. Finance Secretary Vivek Joshi and other senior officials of the Finance Ministry were also present in today's meeting. In the last few years, the financial performance of public sector banks has been found to be quite satisfactory.

NPA reduced, now the challenge of cyber fraud

It was told in the meeting that the overall NPA level of public sector banks (compared to assets) has come down to 0.76 percent. The net interest margin has increased to 3.22 percent and the net profit of banks has increased to Rs 1.45 lakh crore in the year 2023-24. In such a situation, the increasing difference between deposits and loans is a potential threat.

Cyber ​​fraud has been identified as the second major challenge. Regarding cyber security, the Finance Minister has talked about establishing more coordination between the government, banks and regulatory agencies. He urged the banks to keep reviewing their information technology based systems so that it can be ensured that the systems related to cyber security are working properly.