Bangalore: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is seeking enhanced entrepreneurship activities in the Northeastern states of India. It looks to encourage, improve and support entrepreneurs from these regions of the country so as to raise the credit-deposit ratio in this area reports thehindubusinessline.com

The RBI officials insisted that the financial literacy in these regions should be tremendously improvised and must be taken on a war footing note to increase the number of people who would want credit from banks.

K C Chakrabarty, RBI Deputy Governor, said “If CD ratio of the Northeastern states is to be raised, then entrepreneurship activity in this area should be improved and encouraged; CD ratio depends on big industries, but here we do not have much of those big industrial projects because of a variety of reasons”

Meghalaya has 291 bank branches and their financial inclusion is 39 percent which is lower than the national average. A word of caution from RBI, the officials said that, people in the Northeastern region do not take money on credit as they prefer it in the form of subsidies and grants.

RBI also cautioned 12 other commercial banks whose CD ratio is less than 20 percent and said these banks must improve their performance. Chakrabarty added saying that “There is no inclusive growth without financial inclusion, which is linking everybody with banks.”