Telangana government has asked the banks to speed up the process of renewing the accounts of farmers who borrowed crop loans so as to extend fresh loans to them by October 15.
The loan waiver committee, comprising officials from Finance, Agriculture and State Level Bankers Committee, which met here on Saturday to review the progress directed the bankers to give a daily report on account renewals from October 7 till October 15. Though the government released Rs. 4,250 crore — 25 per cent of total outstanding crop loans of Rs. 17,000 crore — much before September 30, banks are still in the process of renewing the loan accounts of farmers.
So far about Rs. 3,500 crore loan accounts — Rs.1,700 crore loans availed from cooperative banks and an equal amount from Regional Rural Banks and Commercial Banks – had been credited to bank accounts of loanees. After the government issued a GO on August 13 that those farmers who repaid their crop loans would also be covered under loan waiver, apparently several farmers repaid their loans.
Sources said that of 6,000 bank branches in the State, 4,000 branches are in rural areas and 10 district Collectors, 450 tahsildars were also following up the process of loan waiver extended to 36 lakh borrowers.
“The bankers are on the job but given the giant matrix, it is not easy implementing the loan waiver scheme in a jiffy as a lot of complexities will also come into play with so many stakeholders,” an official said adding 1,500 to 1,600 accounts of borrowers were being handled per day by the bank branches.
One of the factors for slow progress was banks were asked to cross- check and do the social auditing to ensure genuine borrowers were benefited. But bankers were told to devise a mechanism to stick to timelines too, an official said.
So far as gold loans were concerned, the committee said that banks should evaluate the borrowers on three counts — whether they utilised the amount for agriculture purpose, availed seven per cent interest subvention scheme and based on the scale of finance.
