HYDERABAD: Chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy has urged bankers to lend more loans than the target set during the rabi season considering the prevailing drought conditions in the state.Addressing the 176th State Level Bankers’ Committee meeting on Monday, the chief minister also instructed them to speed up issuing of loans, as the bankers lent only Rs 1,494 crore loans to farmers against the target of Rs 10,700 crore. As the bankers were only able to lend loans to 1.8 lakh licensed cultivators out of 5.77 lakh, who had been issued loan eligibility cards during the Kharif season, the chief minister asked bankers to concentrate on issuing loans, particularly to licenced cultivators. Banks should lend more loans to agriculture and allied sectors to avoid farmers depending on private lenders who were collecting exorbitant interest rates, he said. He opined it will be easy to recover loans from the farming community as the government was extending interest-free loans to farmers. He added that Self-Help Groups can also avail interest-free loans from January onwards. “With poor lending to the medium, small and Micro enterprises, the infrastructure and export sectors have taken a backseat. With the Centre giving instructions for lending up to Rs 1 crore loans without any collateral surety, it would brighten the prospects of MSME in the state,” Kiran Reddy observed. He assured the state government would concentrate on extending support to agriculture and allied sectors like dairy, livestock and fisheries for providing alternative income sources to the farming community.Minister for revenue, N Raghuveera Reddy said the state government would distribute input subsidy to drought-affected farmers online so that the loans promptly reach beneficiaries and avoid involvement of middlemen. He further said about 20 per cent of all loans, subsidies and other benefits allocated to farming community would be given to licenced cultivators only.
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