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Patna,(BiharTimes): Farmers in some of the essentially loan than agrarian states, for example Bihar, have drawn much less bank loan than that of non-agriculture state of Delhi, Union Territory of Chandigarh and several other states.
A report said that while Delhi’s 38,000 farmers drew agricultural loans worth Rs 24,000 crore in 2009 Bihar’s 11 lakh farmers in the same year had a loan outstanding of Rs 7,700 crore and Odisha’s nine lakh farmers had Rs 7,000 crore. |
In relatively larger state of Gujarat 15 lakh farmers got agricultural loan of Rs 18,000 crore in that year.
Report also said that the trend was repeated in subsequent years till 2012, except that the total outstanding of Gujarat now exceeded that of Delhi in the financial year ending March 31, 2012.
What is strange is that Delhi and Chandigarh drew so much loan when the farm land in these two states are very small.
Though Centre is planning to bring about a second Green Revolution and concentrating especially in the eastern states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal the loan taken by farmers in these places are much less.
Punjab has eight to nine lakh farmers having loan outstanding of Rs 20,000 crore to Rs 28,000 crore between 2009 and 2012. In Haryana, it ranged between Rs 16,000 crore and Rs 20,000 crore from at least six lakh farmers. Even a large state like UP with 38 lakh farmers drew not more than Rs 38,000 crore farm loans in any year.
Experts are of the view that the lopsided disbursement of farm loans is a matter of concern. Banks failure to identify farmers and evaluate their capacity to service loans are being attributed to these incongruity.
According to official estimate the government is losing nearly $ two billion every year in writing off bad debts of public sector banks. Agricultural loans account for highest percentage of bad debts among all categories of loans.
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