RBI plainspeak on loan waiver spurs A.P., TS into action

It says situation in two States does not warrant rescheduling of loans. This delay turned out to be costly lapse for the State governments, officials admit. But then the State was going through extraordinary situation because of agitations and the same was conveyed to the RBI with a request to relax the three-month norm.

With the RBI commenting that the situation in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana did not warrant rescheduling of crop loans going by the crop yield records during 2013, both the governments seriously started exploring various options to mobilise resources for implementing loan waiver.

Even as time is running out, officials in both the governments are not ready to hazard a guess how and when the required amounts would be mobilised to enable farmers avail fresh loans for kharif. “We are looking at various options to keep our loan waiver commitment at the earliest. We still hope RBI will respond positively in a week after our detailed clarifications sent on Tuesday,” is all they are willing to say.

While Telangana government has not yet spelt out its plan, Andhra Pradesh government proposed to raise bank loans against securitisation of revenue of Beverages Corporation, excise, sand mining, auction of red sanders for the next 10 years. It also directed the farmers to repay loans if they could and the government would reimburse it later. What could have been a routine method to seek reschedule of crop loans when crops in a region are damaged by natural calamities became complicated with the United Andhra Pradesh government unable to notify the affected mandals due to the drought and then Phailin cyclone in 2013 within the stipulated three-month period.

Costly lapse

This delay turned out to be costly lapse for the State governments, officials admit. But then the State was going through extraordinary situation because of agitations and the same was conveyed to the RBI with a request to relax the three-month norm.

But the issue became complicated when RBI wanted both the governments to justify their request for rescheduling of crop loans vis-a-vis the crop-wise yield data furnished by the Directorate of Economics and Statistics. The crop yields did not fall below 50 per cent to justify re-scheduling was the RBI’s contention.

Some officials took exception to the RBI questioning government’s methodology to determine the extent of crop damage.

“RBI only lifted the district-wise crop yield data which is based on randomly done crop cutting projections and not the actual yield in affected mandals. Apart from yields, there are other parameters to determine distress in the farm sector,” they maintained.