The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Cooperative banks in the black, says Minister

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Nov 08, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Cooperative banks in the black, says Minister

By Our Staff Reporter

COIMBATORE, NOV. 7. Cooperative banks that were in the red in 2001 have begun making profits and are poised to develop further, the Minister for Food and Cooperatives, V. Jayaraman, said here today.

He was speaking at a function organised to inaugurate two central cooperative bank branches at Gandhi Maanagar in Peelamedu and at Sundarapuram in Kurichi.

Mr. Jayaraman said cooperative banks, established 94 years ago during the British period, had been functioning profitably till 1996

But that is changing. The Coimbatore District Central Cooperative Bank, which had made losses of Rs. 5.98 crores, had turned the corner in 2001, after the AIADMK came back to power, and had made a profit of Rs. 5.25 crores this year.

He said the banks lost money because of `benami loans' and `consumer loans', where borrowers defaulted on repayment.

The failure of the monsoons over the past three years meant that farmers had not been able to reap good harvests. It was the cooperative banks that had come to their rescue and advanced crop loans.

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