KIGWEMA, Mar 14 (NEPS): Nagaland State Chief Minister, Neiphiu Rio has today inaugurated Customer Service Point (CSP) of banking correspondent here at Panchayat Hall of Kigwema Village, some 14 kilometers away from Kohima.
The Chief Minister said the success implementation of this project would go to other villages of the state. He said the opening of this CSP Banking Correspondent was to provide loan to all the villagers of the rural areas and called upon the villagers to avail the opportunity. Today some people lent money at the rate of 10% per month whereas Bank provide loan at the rate of 1% per month, where Rio said that people lost their belonging or fail in their business due to high rate of interest charged by the public and encouraged the gathering to avail loan at the lowest rate of interest.
This CSP at Kigwema is first of its kind in the whole of the Nagaland State and it would become a “role model” for the rest of the State, said the Chief Minister. Stating that the banking authorities should not concentrate their banking activities only on the State capital, Kohima and State’s commercial hub, Dimapur, the Chief Minister said they should expand their banking activities to other parts of the State including rural areas. In this regard, he assured his Government’s full support to the banking authorities to go all out effort to expand the banking sectors in the State.
Rio also said the State Government had already declared the current year as the “Year of Entrepreneur,” and this would continue for the next year too. He expressed the hope that the youth would benefit a lot from this new scheme.
Such banking facilities under the newly launching scheme – “Customer Service point” – are introduced in the villages with a population of over 2000. And the SBI has chosen Kigwema to be the launching village in the State.
The main objectives of engaging the Services of Business Correspondent of the CPS are to use the services of those indentified institutional agents or organizations and other entities for supporting the bank in extending financial services, operating from different locations away from the bank branches.
The idea of launching such services in the village is also to provide “comprehensive financial services” to the underprivileged and compassing savings, credit, remittance, insurance and pension products in a cost effective manner in the untapped and unbanked areas.
Encouraging the college students to open their Bank Accounts to draw their scholarship for easy transaction, Rio said there was a record of about 50000 people had opened their account within six months. He said that many of their people took loan but failed to repay in time. “One must know the procedure to seek loan from the bank and pay back the loan in time,” he said. “One must also get insured from the insurance company so that if their business failed they can get compensation from the company.”
AGM, State Bank of India, RBO Dimapur, A.K. Das gave a briefing on CSP. Short speeches were also delivered by K. Ashi Khieya OSD (Revenue) Finance Department, N. K. Gayan G.M RBI, Guwahati and Tilok Das DGM SBI Guwahati.
MLA, Advisor IT & C, Vikho-o Yhoshu chaired the program while Pastor, Kigwema Baptist Church, Zhavi pronounced invocation prayer. Chairman, Kigwema Village Council, Zapuo Zhasa delivered the welcome address and the vote of thanks by VDB Secretary Kigwema Village, Thorie. Cultural item was also presented by Kigwema Village.
