Banks to pass short term crop loan targets: Finance Minister

09 Nov 2011 Evaluate
The finance minister expects banks to surpass the short term crop loan target set in the Union Budget. For the current financial year, the government has set the target of Rs 4.75 lakh crore compared to Rs 3.75 lakh core in the last financial year.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said, "We had said that we will double the short-term crop loan to the farmers within three years that was announced by my predecessor in the 2005 budget. Within two years, we surpassed the target. Last year, my target was to provide Rs.375, 000 crore short-term crop loan to the farmers. This year I have fixed the target of Rs.475, 000 crore and I am confident that we will surpass that target, he added.

The government is very keen on the issue of financial inclusion, as per the finance minister, the banks have achieved 46% of their financial inclusion target in West Bengal and other eight north-eastern states and banks will cover remaining un-branched blacks by the end of the current financial year.

In this year’s union budget, the Finance Minister had announced that the government will provide banking facilities to the villages having population of more than 2,000. In the 2009-10, West Bengal and other north-east states had 10,721 villages were identified where banking facilities are to provided.  

Till September 2011, around 4,969 of these villages have been covered and remaining 5,752 villages are expected to be covered by March 2012. Finance Minister said the number of accounts to be opened in the nine states were 21, 31,754.

As a strategy, the commercial banks wants the 30% of such branches may be opened by Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) because they have better connectivity via core banking services, cost of operations will be low and they also have better connectivity with the rural economy. Whereas, 70% of the branches can be set up by the commercial banks

© 2026 The Alchemists Ark Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved. MoneyWorks4Me ® is a registered trademark of The Alchemists Ark Pvt. Ltd.

×