Spandan Borah, Guwahati (Aug 22): To boost its presence in the Northeastern region, the country’s central bank is all set to open its third office in Shillong on August 24. The new sub-office will be inaugurated at 11 am on Friday by the Deputy Governor of the RBI Dr K.C.Chakrabarty, an RBI press release stated. The RBI Shillong office will be housed at Apphira Building, Fruit Garden along the Shillong-Jowai road. Thirty banks are currently operational in Meghalaya, according to statistics available on the RBI website. Of these, 26 are commercial banks, three co-operative banks and one regional rural bank. Incidentally, the central bank has offices in Guwahati and Agartala in NE. The RBI data paint a dismal picture for the state where commercial banks cover 61 per cent of those in the banking network while the regional rural banks account for 22 per cent of those in the realm of banking leaving cooperative banks to cover the rest. The apex bank has also expressed its anxiety at the low level of credit deposit ratio in the state. Its report says that the overall CD Ratio of the state has shown a little improvement to rise from 30.96 per cent as on March 31, 2011 to 37.04 per cent as on March 31, 2012. “Banks with unsatisfactory performance were advised to gear up their performance so as to achieve a benchmark level of 40 per cent. They were specifically advised to augment flow of credit to agriculture, MSME sector and education loan in order to give a fillip to these sectors,” the RBI report reads.
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