AP Govt to go ahead with loan waiver
HYDERABAD: Despite Reserve Bank's observation that it did not see any reason to concede Andhra Pradesh's request for rescheduling of crop loans as a precursor to the proposed loan waiver, agriculture minister P Pulla Rao claimed that his government was preparing itself to pay the crop loans of farmers.
Chief minister N Chandrababu had announced last week that all crop loans and gold loans up to `1.5 lakh would be waived as the government would carry the entire debt burden costing `35,000 crore.
Speaking to reporters at the Secretariat, Pulla Rao said that there was no clarity on the issue of crop loan rescheduling as the RBI had not given any assurance to the government till now. 'There is no clarity from RBI on the loan rescheduling. Hence the government has decided find means to raise the loan amount,' he said.
The RBI had asked the state government to furnish details about the distress caused by the calamities to make a case for rescheduling of loans, he said. Whatsoever, the burden of loan would not be put on the farmers, he assured.
The minister said that he had not come across any incident of banks blocking the savings accounts of farmers for not paying loan instalments. 'I have not received any such complaint. If any such thing comes to my notice, I would talk to that particular bank,' he assured.
He said that I-pads would be provided to farmers to access latest farm technology. On availability fertilisers in the state, the agriculture minister said that the state was supposed to receive 3.76 lakh tonnes of fertilisers in the month of June from the Centre but received only 2.59 lakh tonnes, resulting in a deficit of 1.17 lakh tonnes.
He said that he would be writing to the Centre for allotment of 2.5 lakh tonnes of pesticides and would be personally meeting the Union fertiliser minister next week.
News Posted: 31 July, 2014
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