Tamil Nadu up in banking activities

Chennai: Tamil Nadu has the maximum district-wise representation in accessing banking services with its 17 districts finding place in the top 50 districts, as per the recent financial inclusion report released by a Mumbai-based ratings agency Crisil. Crisil has included district-wise data covering 652 districts in 35 States and Union Territories for the fiscal 2013 to prepare this report. Puducherry, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Goa and Chandigarh are the top five states/Union Territories in the report.  This is the first time that Tamil Nadu moved to the top third position with a CRISIL Inclusix score (see box) of 79.2. In the previous rating, the state was ranked eighth.

The continued progress of banking services along the three dimensions of financial inclusion namely branch penetration, deposit penetration, and credit penetration is the major reason for this jump.Based on the data provided by RBI to Crisil, more than 1 crore new savings accounts were opened in the state during the fiscal 2012- 2013 resulting in an 11.3 increase in the deposit penetration score to 80.5. Along with that this is the first time that Crisil has added micro financial institutions (MFIs) into the index computation.

The state has a very strong presence of large-sized MFIs and self-help group bank linkage programmes. This ensured that the state had a very high credit penetration and branch penetration thereby improving its overall rating. According to Pawan Agrawal, Chief Analytical Officer, CRISIL Ratings, the high Crisil Inclusix score is the reflection of society's financial discip-line.
“The state has improved in overall banking activities. In the fiscal year 2013, the number of saving banks account opened all over India was 12 crore. In that more than one crore was from Tamil Nadu,” he said.

He added that better inclusix score meant better economic activity.“This also impacts the life style of the people because access to a financial product means that you are depositing your savings in a regulated manner and you have more visibility on your saving. If you don't have access to financial product you will put your saving in unregulated methods like chit funds and can lose
the money,” Agrawal said.

K. R. Shanmugam, director & professor, Madras School of Economics, said the state government had promoted a lot of self help groups in Tamil Nadu which had helped in opening new bank accounts and increasing the financial inclusion of the state. “Also the credit deposit ratio is one of the highest in the country,” he said.