North East Bankers' Conclave 3.0 Held at Mizoram University

The North East Bankers' Conclave 3.0 was held at Mizoram University in Aizawl, where Dr Sukanta Majumdar, Union Minister of State for Development of North Eastern Region and for Education, asked banks to spread their services faster and lend more freely across the region. He spoke on 13 October 2026 and the ministry put out the details the next day.

Where banking has reached

The minister said 131 new bank branches have been opened in the Northeast and 126 ATMs installed. Of the 9,479 villages identified for coverage, 6,905 are now served either by a bank branch or by India Post Payments Bank, which works out to about 73 per cent. That leaves 2,574 villages uncovered: 2,515 of them are to be reached through India Post Payments Bank and 59 through physical branches.

The credit worry

Dr Majumdar was unhappy with the credit-deposit ratio in the region. Manipur and Assam stand at or above the national ratio of 79.5 per cent, while Mizoram and several other states of the Northeast trail behind, which means savings raised locally are not coming back as local loans. To change that he asked for bank-wise lending targets, regular review in State Level Bankers' Committees, dependable land records, full Aadhaar seeding of eligible CASA accounts and wider take-up of PM SVANidhi. Banks were urged to look seriously at workable loan proposals from farmers, small enterprises, women entrepreneurs and tourism businesses.

What is holding expansion back

Buildings, all-weather roads and VSAT or fibre connectivity were named as the main obstacles. The minister asked chief secretaries to fix responsibility and deadlines for every pending location, and asked banks to open prepared sites quickly and to post Business Correspondents and BC-Sakhis where a full branch is not workable. For the Northeast the population norm for opening a branch has been brought down to 2,000 on a cluster basis, against 3,000 for the country as a whole.

The conclave series

The first such conclave was held in New Delhi in April 2023. The second, at Agartala in December 2024, adopted a six-point roadmap covering more branches and ATMs, coverage of unbanked villages, low-density districts, banking norms suited to the region and universal access to Direct Benefit Transfer. This edition ran four breakout sessions, on banking infrastructure, on small enterprises and women entrepreneurs, on farm credit and on infrastructure financing.