Open account for every rural family, banks told

It will facilitate loan disbursement to target groups under various welfare schemes: Chief Minister

Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy has asked bankers to open an account for every family in rural areas to facilitate disbursement of loans to target groups under various welfare schemes.

“If you can open an account for every family, we want to take all the welfare schemes online and make disbursement of crop, housing loans, pensions and scholarships through banks. It will help the government and the banks to plug leakages” he said on Saturday.

Addressing the State Level Bankers Committee meeting, Mr. Kiran Kumar Reddy said the problems in loan disbursements to priority sectors had been long pending.

Referring to shortfall in meeting crop loans and loans to licensed cultivators and allied sectors, the Chief Minister said the banks should do more to bridge the gap.

They also should increase scale of finance for major crops in proportion to their rising production cost. Some sectors like housing, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Backward Classes small and marginal entrepreneurs got poor loan disbursement. Responding to SLBC president B.A. Prabhakar's observations to help banks for increased financing, Mr. Kiran Kumar Reddy said ‘revenue sadassus' were being organised for updating land records and bringing them online and providing foolproof pattadar passbooks.

As rescheduled loans would carry higher interest, banks should encourage farmers to go for new loans as the government had announced interest free loans up to Rs.1 lakh on prompt repayment. The shortfall of 34 per cent in lending target to rural SHGs was worrisome, the Chief Minister added.