Union Minister for Home and Cooperation, Amit Shah, has welcomed the steps announced by the RBI in Wednesday’s monetary policy to increase credit flow through cooperative banks.
Emphasising that there is immense potential for development and empowerment of farmers, agriculture and rural areas of the country in the cooperative sector, Amit Shah, in a release by the Press Information Bureau, stated that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made many historic decisions for the cooperative sector in less than a year, which have been long overdue.
“I am extremely happy that the RBI has announced three important policy decisions for the cooperative sector. Firstly, the individual housing loan limit for urban co-operative banks (UCBs) has been doubled. With this, the individual housing loan limit for Tier 1 UCBs has now been increased from Rs 30 lakh to Rs 60 lakh, for Tier 2 UCBs from Rs 70 lakh to Rs 1.40 crore and for rural cooperative banks (RCBs) the limit has been increased from Rs 20 lakh and Rs 30 lakh to Rs 50 lakh and Rs 75 lakh respectively,” he added.
The minister further said that allowing RCBs to lend to the commercial real estate residential housing sector will increase their scope and give impetus to the resolution of providing affordable houses to people.
“Now UCBs have been allowed to provide doorstep banking facilities to their customers like commercial banks. With this decision, cooperative banks will now get a level playing field in the competitive banking sector. The increase in credit flow to the housing sector through cooperative banks will lead to an increase in economic activity, increase capital formation and employment generation, which will have a multiplier effect on the economy,” Shah opined.
