Banks to give only 50 pc amount as fresh crop loans: Drought

The banks would give only 50 percent amount as fresh crop loan to the farmers after rescheduling their loans, following the payment of the 25 percent crop loan waiver to the tune of Rs 4,250 crores to the banks in first phase by the state government.

According to Agriculture officials, district officials have identified 3,15,015 farmers  eligible for the crop loan waiver and the amount comes to the tune of the Rs 1510.91 crores in the district.

However, the state government has released Rs 377.73 crore, that comes to 20 percent in the total crop loan waiver to the 32 banks in the district and the remaining 75 percent amount of crop loan waiver will be paid to the farmers with interest in three phases. 

The state government has asked the farmers to take fresh loans from the banks.

The state government has formed the redressal committees at mandal level with Tahasildar as its chairman, respective bank mangers and MPDO as members to look into the complaint if any, in the selection of farmers for crop loan waiver.

Joint Director of Agriculture (JDA) S. Rose Leela said the fresh loan amount would be based on scale of finance and the remaining amount after deducting 25 percent from the crop loan arrears up to Rs 1 lakh.

It is not clear whether the banks will give only 50 percent of amount of fresh crop loans even for Rabi season as state government has not paid the crop loan waiver up to Rs 1 lakh by the state government.

It is noticed that the crop loan waiver announced by the state government has become more useful for small and marginal farmers as most of these farmers as most of farmers had taken loan bellow Rs 1 lakh.

But big farmers had taken crop loans from various banks the amount goes beyond Rs 1 lakh. The delay in waiver of crop loan had hit the farmers for the last few months after the TRS was voted to power.