BANGALORE: The State Bank of Mysore (SBM) on Tuesday launched a new scheme called “Prathiphala Yojane” to encourage farmers to avail crop loans.
“During the current year we intend to redouble our efforts to increase credit flow towards agriculture particularly by way of crop loans for the on going Kharif season and ensuing Rabi season. The previous year was not a good year for our farmers. Hence, in order to encourage and motivate farmers to avail of crop loans, we have formulated this scheme called Prathiphala Yojane,” Dilip Mavinkurve, Managing Director, State Bank of Mysore said.
Under the Prathiphala Yojane scheme, the bank has announced an additional interest rebate of 1 per cent for timely repayment on all loans availed by farmers. With the interest subvention scheme of the Central Government, crop loans up to `3 lakhs are charged with 7 per cent interest per annum. The Union Finance Minister had announced a interest rebate of 2 per cent for loans up to `3 lakhs in his Budget. The State Government also offers a 2 per cent interest rebate on crop loans up to `50,000. With the scheme, the effective rate of interest to a prompt paying farmer of a crop loan upto `50,000 would be 2 per cent per annum and for those farmers availing upto `3 lakhs would have an effective rate of interest of 4 per cent.
Presently, SBM has made agricultural advances of about `4,200 crore, of which `1,200 crore is for production credit and `3,000 crore is by way of investment credit.
Agricultural finance constitutes 25 per cent of the banks advances in Karnataka and priority sector loans including agriculture constitute over 50 per cent in the State.
The launch was conducted in the presence of Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa. “The bank intends to conduct wide spread credit camps all over the Karnataka to grant Kissan Credit Card,” Dilip said.
The bank also said that the Government should support the bank to recover from willful defaulters who despite implementation of the Agricultural Debt Relief Scheme of 2008 are refusing to repay the bank loans.
