In the last few years, several rural banks have started sanctioning loans to individuals for purchase of solar lighting systems. In order to expand the market driven activity, during the year the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy introduced a pilot scheme to encourage the banks to increase the coverage of solar lights through commercial loans.
Under this scheme, the Ministry provides incentives to the banks, specially the regional rural banks for some of the promotional activities such as capacity building, awareness generation and preparation of manual for procedures, software and other specified activities to extend loans to consumers to purchase solar home lighting and other solar systems for powering small loads. During the year 16 Regional Rural Banks from Bihar (1), Haryana (2), Jharkhand (1), Karnataka (1), Maharastra (1) Rajasthan (1) and Uttar Pradesh (9) have proposed to sanction loans for 1,19,000 Solar PV systems. These banks have 3,687 branches in 133 districts. By December 2009, 37,865 loans have been sanctioned and Solar PV systems installed by rural banks.
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