HYDERABAD: Revenue minister N Raghuveera Reddy on Friday threatened to walk out of the 175th state-level bankers' meeting after SBI officials failed to give an assurance on financing licensed cultivators without insisting for a notarized affidavit, even as chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy urged bankers to bail out farmers who have declared a crop holiday in 13 mandals. Insisting that bankers should pass a resolution to the effect that a notarized affidavit was not mandatory to extend finance to licensed cultivators, the minister expressed serious displeasure at the meager number of loan eligibility cards (LECs) issued to tenant farmers. "According to the preliminary estimate of 30 lakh LECs in the state arrived at after a series of meetings involving bankers for five months, only 5.45 lakh farmers took LECs and banks have received applications from a meager 91,678 LEC holders. I strongly feel there is lot of communication gap between bankers and field level officers," he pointed out. Even RBI Regional Director A.S.Rao asked banks to focus more on lending to agriculture saying, "The disbursal of loans to farmers in the state is far from satisfactory." Meanwhile, bankers called for concerted efforts from the state government saying, "The issue of recovery continues to haunt banks in the state. As of June 2011, it is observed that overdues are mounting up under crop loans, agriculture term loans, SHG loans, loans under Indiramma, Vambay, and Rajiv Gruhakalpa etc. Banks need government's urgent help to get recoveries which will motivate our managers to lend more under different schemes." The declaration of crop holiday by farmers will have an adverse impact on recovery of loans," said SLBC president R Ramachandran.
TOI
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