Patna: Bihar govt proposes to hike co-op loan to farmers to Rs 3 lakh

The Bihar government on Monday proposed state cooperative banks to increase loan limit to farmers to Rs 3 lakh from Rs 50,000 now.

The proposal came during a review meeting of state cooperative banks by Deputy Chief Minister and state's Finance minister Sushil Kumar Modi. The meeting also decided to the give task of distributing kisan credit card and refund of loan to financial strong PAX on pilot basis in Nalanda, Patna, Ara, Bhagalpur and Gopalganj districts.

"It proposed to give one per cent commission to such PAX for distribution of loan and recovery of loan amount," a release from the Deputy CM office said.

The meeting was attended by Principal Secretary Finance Rameshwar Singh, Principal Secretary Cooperative Department Atul Prasad, Managing Director NABARD A B Deshpande and Chairman of state cooperative bank Ramesh Choubey. They also discussed on loan disbursed by cooperative banks in 2012-13 fiscal which was Rs 337.86 crore which was Rs 50 crore less than the previous financial year 2011-12. The target of distributing loan during 2012-13 was Rs 2322 crore.

Considering poor performance of cooperative banks, the loan target for 2013-14 has been reduced to Rs 800 crore. Likewise, the cooperative banks distributed kisan credit cards to 16,492 farmers against the target of 2.21 lakh in the fiscal 2012-13. The Deputy CM asked the cooperative banks to improve their performance and achieve the target of Rs 800 loan distribution set up for current financial year, the release added.