Loan against 80K Student Credit Cards to be sanctioned by Jan 15

Kolkata: The SLBC (State Level Bankers Committee) meeting held at Nabanna on Friday cleared impediments related to the disbursal of loans associated with Student Credit Card (SCC) with banks agreeing to complete disbursal of loans against 80,000 such cards by January 15, 2023. About 37,782 credit cards have already been sanctioned and a loan of Rs 1,105 crore has been disbursed against them.

The officials of the Finance department have scrutinised the rejections and have identified 21,000 cases against which all documents have already been furnished. "As it was certified that these cases have been cleared, the bankers agreed that the amount against these 21,000 SCC will be disbursed by Dec 31," Amit Mitra, Special Advisor to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Finance, said.

In the case of another 21,000 SCC applicants, some documents have been missing which will be cleared in due course and the loan amount against these cards will be disbursed by January 15, 2023. Mitra added that the rejection rate has been found to be quite high in the case of SCC.

Mitra, in presence of state Finance minister Chandrima Bhattacharjee, Manoj Pant, Additional Chief Secretary, Finance, held a meet with SLBC (State Level Bankers Committee) to address several banking issues. The bankers were convinced that there was minimum risk involved in SCC with the state government being the guarantor.

The SCC scheme is designed to support students to pursue secondary, higher secondary, madrasah, undergraduate and post-graduate studies, including professional degrees and other equivalent courses in any school, madrasah, college, university and other affiliated institutes within and outside India.

Students studying in various coaching institutions for appearing in different competitive examinations like Engineering, Medical, Law, IAS, IPS, WBCS etc, can also avail of the loan under this scheme.

A student from West Bengal can obtain a maximum loan of Rs 10 lakh at 4 per cent per annum simple interest.

The loan can also be used for purchasing laptops, books, tabs etc or for educational travel and research.

Mitra told reporters that MSME lending is well set to surpass the target of Rs 1,10,178 crore for the 2022-23 financial year.

"We, in the first two quarters, have achieved Rs 70,667 crore and so are hopeful that the target will be exceeded," he added. He further maintained that the state government is well poised to attain self-sufficiency in egg production with 1,200 crore eggs being produced annually. The total requirement of eggs for the state is 1,400 crore. "We have progressed very fast in augmenting egg production with four big companies investing in the hatchery sector," he said.