Mumbai-based Bank of India (BoI) is planning a big push in funding contract farming initiatives. | |
| The bank "� the sixth-largest in terms of assets in the country "� is in talks with four major corporates to lend Rs 400 crore for their proposed contract farming activities in Gujarat. |
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| A R Kuppuswamy, Gujarat zonal manager, BoI, said, "We are in talks with four major corporates for contract farming finance. But nothing has been finalise yet." |
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| The bank's agriculture technical team is assessing the contract farming funding proposals. "The bank is targeting agricultural areas of south Gujarat and Mehsana in north Gujarat," said Kuppuswamy. |
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| The companies concerned are also directly involved in the export of agricultural products. |
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| Kuppuswamy said under the contract farming proposals, farmers would get price assurance and would no longer need to depend on money lenders for finance or middlemen for selling their products. |
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| The bank will target commodity traders and farmers based in Unjha, a traditional hub of commodity trade in Mehsana. In Mehsana, castor and jeera would be financed for contract farming. At the same time, the bank will also finance contract farming mainly for tobacco, cotton, banana, groundnuts, mango and chiku in South Gujarat agriculture areas. |
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| "We are looking to finance Rs 100 crore per corporate customer", said Kuppuswamy who added that the deal with the companies with whom they are in dialogue would be finalised by January 2007. |
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| BoI's agricultural advances in Gujarat constitute 18 per cent of all advances in the state. Its advances portfolio in Gujarat totalled Rs 720 crore. The bank's aggregate advances at the end of March 31, 2006 were Rs 65,173 crore. |
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