National Federation of State Cooperative Banks Limited (NAFSCOB) chairman Konduru Ravinder Rao has called upon the farming community to take up commercial crops to reap riches with abundant availability of irrigation sources through Kaleshwaram lift irrigation project (KLIP).
Mr Ravinder Rao visited the Kataram mandal headquarters in Jayashankar-Bhupalapalli district on Tuesday to inaugurate the District Cooperative Central Bank (DCCB)’s 30th ATM . The DCCB is having 67 branches and Kataram branch was the oldest one set up in 1978 with over 22,000 customers.
The bank branch was doing a business of ₹65 crore, including ₹40 crore lending, out of which ₹13 crore was for farming sector. The bank was providing services to self-help groups, housing loans and other services. The ATM was set up to meet the growing demand in the region.
Interacting with customers, the NAFSCOB chairman, who is also Karimnagar DCCB chairman, said that the Kataram region of the erstwhile Karimnagar district was having several natural resources, including irrigation through the river Godavari and the KLIP. As there was abundant water for farm activities now, farmers should go in for commercial crops such as pulses and vegetables along with traditional crops of the region such as paddy and chillies, he stated.
Explaining the successful functioning of Choppadandi Primary agriculture cooperative society (PACS) with the farmers going in for commercial crops and emerging number one PACS in the country, he said that they were taking all measures for strengthening the PACS. They were upgrading the PACS to work on a par with bank branches by extending all services for the benefit of farmers, he added.
With regard to the plea of extending more crop loans from the existing ceiling of ₹1 lakh, Mr Ravinder Rao promised to provide crop loans to the tune of ₹3 lakh which included no interest for ₹1 lakh and ‘pavalavaddi’ (25 paise) interest for the remainder.
District Cooperative Central Bank Chief Executive Officer N Satyanarayana Rao, DCCB director and Manthani Mutharam PACS president Raji Reddy, and PACS presidents Challa Narayana Reddy, Tirupathi Reddy, Shantha Kumar, Rama Rao, and Bhaskar Rao were present.
