Thiruvananthapuram, April 24 State Cooperation Minister G. SudhakaranSudhakaran on Friday said the total deposits in the 1,614 cooperative banks in Kerala would keep increasing despite the slowdown and touch Rs.50,000 crore by November.

Speaking to reporters here, Sudhakaran said when the Left government assumed power in May 2006, the total deposits in these cooperative banks were Rs.20,287 crore.

"At the end of the last fiscal, it was Rs.47,827.13 crore, and by November, it will touch Rs.50,000 crore. We had organised a deposit mobilisation programme in March and were able to get Rs.4,549.37 crore as against our target of Rs.1,250 crore," he said.

According to him, there has also been a remarkable turnaround in the collection of loan outstandings after the Left took over.

"When we took over, the total loan outstanding was 30.14 percent of the deposits and now we have brought it down to 15.89 percent," the minister said.

The cooperative movement has a firm base in the state and Sudhakaran said it was primarily because of the people depositing their savings with the cooperative banks.

"These banks cannot accept non-residents' deposits... nor do the state public sector units deposit with these banks," said Sudhakaran.

The spurt in deposits could also be attributed to the 10.5 percent interest paid as compared to 9 percent by the commercial and scheduled banks in the state.

Referring to the meagre advances made to the agriculture sector - Rs.2,000 crore of the total advances of Rs.38,879.72 crore, the minister said this was on account of the low scale of agricultural activities in the state.