Union Minister of State for Labour and Employment B. Dattatreya has stated that the Reserve Bank of India had assured that it would supply currency to the tune of ₹ 20,000 crore to ₹ 25,000 crore in a span of two to three months.
Even as this was so, there was a need to move to digitalisation in a big way to meet the currency shortage and also for the overall betterment of economy, he told presspersons after a meeting of the State-Level Banking Committee here on Tuesday.
The Union Minister urged bankers to speed up disbursement of crop loans for the kharif season and that they needed to publicise the recently announced pro-farmers’ initiatives of the Centre. He said farmers would continue to get short-term crop loans up to ₹ 3 lakh at 4 per cent interest as the Union Cabinet had approved an interest subvention scheme, also earmarking ₹ 20,339 crore for it.
Small and marginal farmers who borrow at 9% for post-harvest storage of their produce would get interest subvention of 2%, bringing down their interest burden to 7% per annum, he said. As farming activity began in full scale, loans should not be problem for the farmers, said Mr. Dattatreya.
He said he was told that of a targeted ₹ 23,852 crore for loans, ₹ 2,573 crore was disbursed thus far and said bankers had assured him that targets would be met with RBI releasing the balance amount in the next two months.
