HYDERABAD: Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy expressed disappointment over rescheduling of crop loans to farmers and called upon the bankers to reschedule crop loans to the 878 drought affected mandals and grant fresh crop loans during rabi season.Speaking at the 177th State-Level Bankers' Committee (SLBC) meeting here on Saturday, chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy said scale of finance to crops in the state was comparatively less than other states and stressed the need to enhance it.“As per the data available, an amount of Rs 489 crore only (3.09 percent) as against Rs 15,823 crore was rescheduled by the banks. I urge the banks to seriously ponder the reasons for this shortfall and adopt corrective measures,'' he said.The meeting was convened to make an overall assessment on the performance of the banks during the current fiscal, the chief minister said and added that though the banks had reached the target there is still some gap which was to be addressed.On the crop loans provided by the banks to the farmers, Kiran Reddy said the state government had funded Rs 48,000 crore for agricultural lending of which Rs 30,985 crore is crop loan for the current year and hoped it would be more in the next year as the Centre had increased the financial allocation to Rs one lakh crore.He said under the crop loans, the state government had announced that it would provide loans to farmers at zero percent interest up to `1 lakh from this rabi season and asked the bankers to make necessary adjustments with the finance department on the funding.The chief minister asked the bankers to take steps for opening a bank account for every family covering villages with a population of above 2,000 so that all welfare programmes, scholarships and agriculture related issues were made online.He also expressed disappointment over poor lending to SCs, STs, backward classes and other weaker sections for setting up micro and small enterprises. The chief minister said that though the achievement under annual state credit plan is about 82 percent for specific schemes benefiting weaker sections but at the end of this financial year, the achievement under Minorities Finance Corporation is 24.62 percent, SC Finance Corporation (16.57 percent), ST Finance Corporation (2.53 percent) and BC Finance Corporation (44 percent).Referring to credit linkage for women self-help groups (SHGs), he said banks achieved a target of only 66 per cent.As against the lending target of Rs 9,084 crore, the disbursal's are only Rs 6,018 crore as on March 10 this year.
Comments
0 comment