Govt pulls up banks for ignoring farmers

Dharwad Zilla Panchayat CEO P A Meghannavar took the commercial and regional rural banks in the district to task and blasted them for their alleged lackluster attitude in providing loans to farmers.

Chairing the meeting to review the monthly performance of the lead bank (Vijaya Bank) in the district on Tuesday, Meghannavar said, banks were not evincing interest in helping the farmers by providing the loans while they were overzealous in mobilising deposits. Meghannavar pointed out that the banks had collected deposits to the tune of Rs 9,000 crore in Dharwad district last year but disbursed only Rs 7,000 crore as loans. “This is just 74 per cent of deposits collected. Where do you lend the remaining money,” he asked the bankers. The CEO was unhappy with the Karnatak Vikas Grameena Bank, which has the head office in Dharwad and covers nine districts. He said, the pioneer regional rural bank’s credit to agriculture sector was just 60 per cent. KVGB has more branches in rural areas of the district but its lending is disappointing, he noted.

 

Meghannavar said, there were complaints that the branch mana-

gers were not responsive to the needs of farmers and middlemen were active in securing loans. He asked branch managers to take steps to

prevent the misuse of facilities by unscrupulous persons. He called upon the banks to increase the quantum of loans to agriculture.

Assistant General Manager of Nabard Mahadevaiah said, it was prima facie clear that the banks had not helped farmers to the expected extent. Only 130,000 farmers had been given crop loans to the tune of Rs 400 crore in the district, he observed. Mahadevaiah said, Nabard had formulated a scheme to rejuvenate borewells at a cost of Rs 25,000-30,000 each. Expressing his displeasure over banks’ poor performance in lending for animal husbandry and other agri-related occupations, Mahadevaiah said only Rs 14 crore out of the targeted Rs 61 crore had been disbursed to these sectors.

He asked the bank managers to follow the guidelines issued by RBI and reschedule farmers’ loans in Dharwad, Navalgund, Hubli and Kundgol taluks that have been declared drought-hit by the government.

The bank managers on their part, said the farmers’ tendency to believe that their loans would be waived was creating hurdles in rescheduling of loans.