Farmers reaped a bumper harvest of paddy this rabi season and the government agencies procured it paying minimum support price and amounts were transferred to their the bank accounts. But they are struggling to encash their earnings.
The liquidity crunch has forced PSU banks and the District Cooperative Central Bank (DCCB) to put a ceiling of ₹5000 to ₹20000 per week on withdrawals by farmers.
The farmers are being forced to make repeated visits to the banks to withdraw a large amount to clear their hand loans taken for the rabi crop and pay for inputs for ensuing kharif.
Daily visit
Srinivas, a farmer from Porandla village of Thimmapur mandal, said that he sold paddy worth ₹ 50,000 which was deposited in the DCCB in Karimnagar town. He was forced to visit the bank every day since last one week only to collect ₹5,000 per day.
“Due to the good rainfall, we secured a bountiful crop. But, we are unable to taste the fruit of our crop as the banks are not paying us our hard-earned money due to ceiling on withdrawal,” said another farmer Ramaswamy from Jammikunta. Due to the delay we are unable to clear the debts and go for the kharif season, he added.
Restrictions
DCCB Chief Executive Officer Satyanarayana Rao said that the amount was deposited in the name of the farmers, but due to shortage of cash they were unable to pay it to the farmers. “We cannot pay more than ₹20,000 per week to a farmer,” he said and added that they had taken up the issue with the Reserve Bank of India. The DCCB had opened 517 paddy procurement centres through primary agricultural cooperative societies (PACS) in the erstwhile Karimnagar district. It had procured 4,18,805 metric tonnes of paddy worth ₹632.17 crore. The DCCB made payments to the tune of only ₹363.39 crore to the farmers.
Conceding that there was shortage of cash in the banks, manager of a Public Sector Unit bank said that the deposits have declined considerably in all the banks and the customers were coming only for withdrawals creating a shortage.
