Bhubaneswar : The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is planning to send its representatives to the districts to create awareness and help potential investors choose the right organisations to invest. The move comes in the wake of a number of fraud cases across the state. In the recent past, the state has seen seven cases, the Balasore chit fund case being the prime example, where money taken from the public has been invested elsewhere, causing huge loss to people. “The RBI has already asked companies doing investment business with the public’s money in the state to register themselves with the national banker. However, the investor should also be clear about the portfolio of such companies and before putting in money, must check the details and ensure that the company is registered with the RBI. The state government, too, has issued orders to this effect at the administrative level,” said Biplab Chakraborty, General Manager of the RBI, Bhubaneswar. Addressing a students’ meet on banking at the Kushagra Institute of Information and Management Science in Bhubaneswar, Chakraborty said there were two types of companies — those that collect investment for their own growth and those that collect investment for investing it with others. The second one needs the RBI’s permission and the investors should demand that the companies show them a copy of the permission letter payment. “We have already started a campaign on the media to make people aware on this, but now we plan to reach out to people at the grassroots,” he said. Sources said the crime branch had registered cases against seven chit fund companies across the state for cheating people of crores of rupees. In the Balasore case, not only civilians, but also police officials were listed as the victims. The kingpin used the money to make a Bollywood film. Speaking at the meet, Samson Moharana, a teacher at the postgraduate department of commerce, Utkal University, said: “Many companies are registering as limited entities under the Companies Act. Making use of loopholes in the law, some of these companies also include collection of money and related business in their activity list. This is also a glaring violation and the local district administration and the police must act to stop such activities to safeguard the investment. In many places, the people are not able to take advantage of the awareness drives and these companies are targeting gullible people.” The state has lately seen more than 20 cheating cases related to ATMs and most of them belonged to a particular public sector bank. Last week, two customers from Paralakhemundi in Gajapati district complained that unauthorised withdrawals of more than Rs 40,000 were made in Haryana. Moharana also said bankers should be aware of the current development scenario, so that the respective banks do not suffer from non-performing assets (NPA). “The permissible NPA level is around 3 per cent around the world. In India, though NPA is shown within 2.5 per cent, in practice, it remains as high as 10 to 15 per cent in many banks,” he said. Chief General Manager of the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development K.K. Gupta said that even today, the banking sector was only considering a small fraction of our population, but the professionals should implement innovative ideas for an inclusive growth.
The Telegraph
