HYDERABAD: Around 91.7 per cent of agricultural households in the State are burdened by loans with each household having an average debt of Rs 1,52,113. According to ‘Situation Assessment of Agricultural Households and Land and Livestock Holdings of Households in Rural India, 2019’, a survey conducted by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, a majority of the outstanding debt is taken from relatives and friends, and not from financial institutions.
In the percentage distribution of amount of outstanding loans by sources, Telangana topped in the country with 41.3 per cent in the category of professional money lenders. The outstanding debts of Telangana farmers in all scheduled commercial banks are 24.8 per cent, in regional rural banks 8.2 per cent, cooperative societies 0.5 per cent, cooperative banks 3.2 per cent, SHGs 4.6 per cent, other institutional agencies 1.2 per cent, agricultural money lenders 9.1 per cent, professional money lenders 41.3 per cent, relatives and friends 1.4 per cent and from other non-institutional agencies 5.8 per cent.
If a loan was received from one of the relatives or friends free of interest, it was considered as a loan taken from ‘relatives and friends’. If the loan had interest, it was considered as taken from an ‘agricultural moneylender’, professional moneylender, ‘input supplier’, depending upon the type of business carried out by the relative or friend.
When contacted, Telangana State Commission for Debt Relief Chairman Nagurla Venkateshwarlu said that the borrowings by farmers were the highest from private money lenders in the State as commercial banks were not coming forward to give crop loans. As per the guidelines of Reserve Bank of India, the commercial banks have to give up to Rs 4 lakh crop loan to farmers without insisting on collateral security. But the banks were not implementing the same, he pointed out.
Venkateshwarlu, who has already written a letter to Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, seeking directions to the bankers to implement the RBI guidelines, said that he would soon convene a meeting with State level bankers and request them to extend crop loans liberally to farmers.