HYDERABAD: The quarterly meeting of State Level Bankers Committee on Monday saw the bankers raising concerns over the poor agricultural investments in the State. They claimed that this was primarily due to non-implementation of the promised agricultural loan waiver scheme by the Telangana government.
The most prominent among the issues raised was that of poor disbursal of short term loans in the State during the Kharif season. According to the numbers presented in the meeting, till the quarter ending in June, only Rs 7,345.50 crore of the target of Rs 29,244 crore was disbursed as crop loans in the State, which amounts to around 25 per cent of the set target.
During the meeting it was also mentioned that the non-performing assets stood at 5.39 per cent, amounting to Rs 3,769 crore while the overdues amounted to Rs 12,345 crore in various agricultural investments, including short-term crop production loans and term loans.
They also pointed out that the State released only Rs 256 crore of the Rs 800 crore disbursed by banks in Telangana, as part of the interest-free crop loan schemes of the government—Vaddileni runalu and Pavala vaddi. The blame for the poor performance of finances in the agriculture sector was put on lack of loan waivers by the State government, resulting in farmers waiting for their old loans to be waived, and failing to come forward for new loans.
Customer outreach
As per directions from the Central government, all public sector banks in the State will be conducting customer outreach initiatives from October 3 to 7. The State-wide outreach will provide information about credit through retail, agriculture, vehicle, home, MSME, education and personal consumer loans. In Hyderabad, it will be on October 4 and in Rangareddy and Medchal districts on October 5 and 7 respectively