After having so many decades of emotional bondage with the District Cooperative Central Bank (DCCB), farmers are suggesting for better changes in the functioning style of the bank.
A recent introduction of ‘drop box for suggestions’ system by the bank has made it possible for the officials to know what the changes farmers want. The suggestions made by them included simplification of loaning process, offering higher value on the long term loans, displaying the required documents at bank offices and reducing the commendable area for economic appraisal.
In the present form, farmers have to fill about 12 pages of application form and have to get signatures of concerned Revenue official at village level at a number of places in the form.
After considering the requests from farmers, the bank has decided change the present format of applications and to reduce the number of pages that need to be filled by farmers. They are to be reduced to four shortly.
Similarly, individual credit limit of farmer comes into force in the next few months. This makes the loan process much easier for them, according to sources in the DCCB.
The bank is also expanding its activities so that it would be a win-win situation for farmers as well as bank. As part of it, primary agriculture societies are being converted in multi-service centres which offer financial services, technical and marketing and storage facilities. The DCCB has also encouraged 19 primary agricultural cooperative societies (PACS) to enter into paddy procurement during 2012-13 financial year and the result was extremely good. “They were able to get a commission of Rs. 24.58 lakh by procuring 73,000 quintals of paddy at a cost of Rs. 9.83 crore,” said a senior officer in the DCCB.
The bank has also been expecting good recovery of short term loans to the tune of 90 per cent as the experience in the past five years is satisfactory.
