The Haryana chief minister, Bhupinder Singh Hooda today urged the Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee to increase upper limit of loan under debt swap Scheme, make tenants and sharecroppers eligible for taking agricultural loans, provide interest subvention to the loanees of long term cooperative- credit structure and decrease the rate of interest charged by the banks from BPL families in self help groups.
Hooda, who was speaking at the meeting of chief ministers of North Zone states held under the chairmanship of Union finance minister here on Tuesday, said upper limit of loan under debt swap Scheme should be increased from Rs 50,000 to Rs 2 lakh, as the maximum amount of loan disbursed under this scheme was quite inadequate to make any significant impact on indebtedness. Only an amount of Rs 50,000 is being given under this scheme which is on the lower side. For a prosperous state like Haryana, farmers had to take a loan of Rs 2 lakh to 3 lakh from local non-institutional sources to meet any major farming or non-farming need.
He also urged the Union finance minister to earmark at least 3% of the target of disbursement of loan for agriculture for extending loan under debt swap Scheme. Banks in Haryana had disbursed loans of Rs 55.89 crore up to December, 2009 against the pro-rata target of disbursement of Rs 424.22 crore. Improvement in disbursement under this scheme was required to make any meaningful impact on indebtedness.
Underscoring the need for making tenants and sharecroppers eligible for taking agricultural loans, Hooda said Rural Financial Institutions (RFI) should not concentrate only on large borrowers to bring down the cost. Small borrowers were in fact more important than large borrowers. ?There was inter-regional difference in the reach of RFIs. Their reach should be in every nook and corner of the state so that people in every area could benefit from credit lending?, he added.