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ICICI BANK: LENDING TO RURAL INDIA IS NOW A PRIME FOCUS (plans to go into alliances with corporate companies having operations in villages and micro-credit institutions)(India Business Insight Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) ICICI Bank, the largest private sector bank, now wants to concentrate on nearly 600 million persons in the villages of India. It has opened a pilot biometric automated teller machine (ATM) at Guntur in Andhra Pradesh. This ATM identifies a customer's fingerprint. The bank plans to go into partnerships with corporate companies having operations in villages and micro-credit institutions as they cannot have a branch-led strategy in rural India. The bank is also confident of doing business at competitive rates in rural India but fears that the intermediation costs would be more than those in cities. ICICI Bank also foresees an increase in demand for rural credit and lending to small and medium enterprises. Copyright 2007 Silverline Information Systems Pvt. Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] |