Imphal, April 27: With the Manipur State Cooperative Bank (MSCB) unable to recover loans given under the Self Employment Guarantee Programme (SEGP), the bank and the Finance Department have agreed to sign a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to defer the loan repayment period.

Allocating Rs 150 crores in the State budget, the State Government deposited the amount at the MSCB for payment of loans to deserving beneficiaries/unemployed youths starting from 2004-05 fiscal.

According to an official source of the Finance Department, the MSCB should repay the Rs 150 crores with annual interest of 1 percent.

While the payment was started in 2004-05, recovery of loan amounts should start from the current fiscal year and the recovered amount should be paid back to the State Government together with annual interest of 1 percent.

However, the failure of the MSCB to recover the amounts has necessitated the bank to sing a new MoU with the Finance Department to extend the repayment period.

On the other hand, one official of the MSCB while talking to The Sangai Express informed that out of Rs 150 crores deposited at the bank by the Government, the bank has distributed Rs 85 crores so far.

The bank is targeting to distribute the remaining Rs 65 crores to the loanees by June this year, he said.

Conceding that the bank is unable to recover the amount it targeted when it started distributing loan amounts in 2004-05, the official said that there was some delay in distributing loan amounts due to incomplete documents of some beneficiaries selected by respective beneficiaries.

During the verification process of the documents submitted, the MSCB detected many incomplete documents, furnishing names of fake employees as guarantors etc which resulted in returning documents and calling new ones.

Due to the delay in distributing loans caused by such lapses, the bank could not recover the loan amounts in time, contended the official.

Till date, the MSCB has managed to recover only Rs 7 crores.

For Imphal West and Imphal East districts, the bank has been able to recover 60 percent of the loan amount distributed.

For other districts including hill districts, the recovery rate stands at just 15 to 20 percent, he disclosed.

Explaining the measures taken up by the bank to recover the loan amounts fully, the official informed that in addition to its own existing recovery staff, the bank is planning to recruit 35 recovery agents.

Of these 35 agents, five agents each will be deployed in Imphal West, Imphal East, Thoubal and Bishnupur districts.

Three agents each will be deployed in Chandel, Churachandpur, Ukhrul, Senapati and Tamenglong districts.

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