The central bank has projected a higher farm loan disbursement target at Tk 15,762.60 crore for the fiscal year 2014-15 in a bid to ensure the country’s food security as well as help making the credit available for the farmers, official sources said.
The farm loan disbursement target for the banks and financial institutions has been fixed as per a five-year farm loan policy, projecting a year-on-year credit growth of 8.0 per cent, a senior official of the bank told The New Nation yesterday, preferring anonymity.
“The central bank has devised the plan as per the government’s decision to increase the volume of agro-loan on yearly basis. The credit growth is expected to boost farm output considerably and it will ensure the country’s food security,” added the official.
As per the plan, he said, the farm loan target has been projected at Tk 17,023.61 crore for FY 2015-16, Tk 18,385.50 crore for FY2016-16, Tk 19,856.34 crore for FY 2017-18 and Tk 21,444.84 crore for FY 2018-19.
Earlier, Bangladesh Bank (BB) had fixed agro-credit disbursement target at Tk 14,595 crore for the current fiscal (2013-14). It has also made mandatory for all local and foreign commercial banks to disburse agriculture credit among the farmers.
Of the target, state-owned commercial banks, financial institutions and 42 private commercial banks, both local and foreign, have disbursed Tk 11,445.79 crore agro-loan among the farmers as on July-March period of the current fiscal, according to a BB statistics.
The loans have been given to agro-based eight sub-sectors such as crops, irrigation equipment, livestock, fisheries, marketing of agricultural products and poverty alleviation.
The BB figure also shows that the banks have also recovered Tk 12,422.63 crore outstanding loans during the July-March period of the current fiscal, showing a rise of 23.19 per cent loan recovery compared to the same period of the previous fiscal.
Besides, they recovered Tk100,84.39 crore outstanding farm loans during July-March period of the fiscal year 2012-13.
The BB official expressed the hope that the farm loan disbursement target this fiscal was likely to exceed the target on the back of favourable weather condition and continuous monitoring by the central bank.
He said agriculture lending, particularly the short-term crop lending, is doing exceedingly well, making us optimistic about achieving the credit disbursement target this fiscal.
“BB is keen to achieve the target by the end of current fiscal and it has strengthened its monitoring drive across the country so that the farmers can get the loan without any hassle,” mentioned the BB official.
Meanwhile, the central banker has warned some banks for their poor performance in agro-loan disbursement, he said, adding: “We would not tolerate their negligence and they (banks) would be penalized in case of failure to reach their target.”
