RBI board meets, discusses banks affairs

BHUBANESWAR: The Central Board of Directors of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Thursday held its meeting in Bhubaneswar to provide an overall direction to the affairs of the Central bank.Chaired by RBI Governor D Subbarao, the meeting was attended by directors Anil Kakodar, MV Rajeev Gowda, YH Malegam, Dipankar Gupta, GM Rao, Ela Bhatt, Indira Rajaraman and Najeeb Jung along with Deputy Governors KC Chakraborty, Subir Gokarn, Anand Sinha and Harun R Khan.Earlier, the Governor met Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and discussed issues relating to growth and development of the State. The Governor also met local bankers and State Government officials and discussed issues like opening of branches by commercial banks in rural areas, progress of financial inclusion, delivery of assistance under the beneficiary oriented programmes through electronic benefit transfer mechanism.Subbarao stressed increasing credit support to agricultural and allied sectors by commercial banks and took stock of the SHGbank linkage programme. He also discussed the recovery positions, financial literacy initiatives and licensing of district cooperative credit banks. The discussions in the Central Board meeting were, however, not disclosed on account of the model CoC being in force.