Andhra Bank holds zonal-level consultation meeting in Tirupati

Tirupati: A zonal-level two-day meeting of public sector Andhra Bank for reviewing the performance of bank branches and its alignment with national priorities began here on Saturday.

Speaking on the occasion, Zonal Manager V Murali Krishna Rao said that the two-day meet was part of the first stage of the bottom-up consultative process initiated by the public sector banks at the behest of Union Finance Ministry designed to generate ideas and review performance of banks to boost up the economy to achieve the ambitious 'five trillion economy'.

This was a first of its kind consultations where the branches themselves were asked to review their performance, deliberate on the issues before the banking sector and ideas on future strategy and the way forward, he stated.

As many as 15 priorities including credit support for economic growth, infrastructure/industry, farm sector and blue economy, Jal Shakti, MSME and MUDRA loans, education loans, export credit, green economy, Swachh Bharat, financial inclusion and women empowerment, Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT), less cash/digital economy, ease of living for senior citizens, alignment with local priorities and Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR) are to be discussed and reviewed besides generating ideas in the meetings.

Rao said that the meet focuses on the ways and means to increasecredit to various sector of the economy, enhance use of technology to bring about innovation and enable big data analytics and make bank citizen centric as well as more responsive to the needs and aspirations of senior citizens, farmers, small industrialists, youth entrepreneurs, students and women.

The ZM mentioned the suggestions and a number of implementable and innovative ideas that come up in the zonal-level meeting on how the bank improve its performance and what the road map for future are being collated and will be sent to higher authorities for further discussion to State Level Bankers Committee (SLBC) which will be held in the last week of this month.

After the SLBC level, final consultations will be held at the national-level in September to compare both intra and inter-bank performances and to finalise the suggestions regarding the way ahead for implementation across PSBs, he informed.