Hyderabad: Faced with severe drought conditions and farmers’ suicides, the Telangana government on Friday held a meeting with State Level Bankers Committee at the Secretariat on issuing fresh loans and rescheduling old loans to bail out farmers.
However, the random auditing of crop loan waiver accounts revealed misuse of 10 per cent of crop loans amounting to Rs 850 crore to Rs 1,000 crore, where farmers secured multiple loans on different names within the same family besides securing loans on fake passbooks among others. The government has decided to recover the misused amount from the farmers.
The finance minister Etela Rajender and agriculture minister Pocharam Srinivas Reddy urged bankers to ensure speedy disbursal of pending crop loans of Kharif and fresh loans for ensuing Rabi season from October.
Addressing the media, Mr Rajender said the banks agreed to increase the credit limit for agriculture sector from Rs 72,112 crore to Rs 78,776 crore for this year.
He said the banks had agreed to disburse crop loans amounting to Rs 18,000 crore for Kharif and Rs 7,700 crore for Rabi.
“Already 80 per cent of the total loan earmarked for Kharif has been disbursed. The remaining 20 per cent would be disbursed by the end of the Kharif season on September 30,” Mr Srinivas Reddy said.
On agriculture, he said the situation was still hopeful with spells of rain in August. A decision on declaring drought mandals in the state would be taken only after the conclusion of Kharif season on September 30. He said of 41,43,000 hectares cultivable area in TS, crops were sown in 34,08,000 hectares amounting to 82 per cent.
