Hyderabad: AP farmers may not get assistance for their gold loans under the farm loan waiver scheme. The government has decided to take into consideration gold loans on the basis of “scales of finance.” Farmers must prove that they have borrowed from banks by pledging their fields.
The AP government is trying to reduce the financial burden caused by the loan waiver scheme by narrow-focusing the conditions under which loans will be written off. Finance department officials, said that the State Level Bankers Committee report had stated: “If the total outstanding of eligible accounts is up to Rs 1.50 lakh for each family the total amount will be Rs 43,614 crore. Among this, the crop loans are Rs 20,194 crore and gold loans are Rs 21,428 crore.”
According to officials, the farmers have taken more gold loans than crop loans. Farmers have borrowed Rs 25,770 crore as farm loans, whereas gold loans are worth Rs 34,488 crore. The government feels that the gold loans were taken for reasons other than agriculture activities. It was found that most farmers had taken both crop and gold loans. To weed out ineligible claims, the government has decided to link Aadhaar cards with farmer’s accounts.
To cut down the burden, the government has decided to consider the gold loans on the basis of ‘scales of finance’. Every bank has a scale of finance that determines the loan to be given for the cultivation for a particular crop in an acre. For paddy, for instance, the scale of finance is Rs 24,000 per acre. Banks cannot lend more than that. But some banks had provided crop and gold loans to farmers which added up to more than the scale of finance.
In Ranga Reddy district, a bank had lent Rs 3.5 lakh to a farmer who had less than five acres of land. Officials observed that most farmers did not pledge their land to borrow money. Farmers must pledge their pattadar passbooks along with gold while taking crop loans. Banks are required to write in their records “for crop purpose.” If the government implements the conditions, most gold loans may not come under the scheme
