BSS, Dhaka :
Bangladesh Bank (BB) Monday announced the agriculture and rural credit policy for the financial year 2014-15 (FY15) aiming at disbursing farm credit of Taka 15,550 crore in the next 12 months.
Governor Dr Atiur Rahman unveiled the credit policy at the central bank’s headquarters in the capital city with a projection of 6.54 percent rise in the loan disbursement target for the current financial year.
The disbursement target for the immediate past 2013-14 financial year (FY14) was Taka 14,595 crore. “The actual credit disbursement in the last fiscal was 10 percent higher than the target when the rate of recovery was 69 percent,” the governor said while announcing the central bank’s flagship policy for agriculture sector.
He said all the banks including public, private and foreign-owned have been asked to disburse at least 2.5 percent of their loan portfolio to the farm and rural sector when the nine new banks were advised to disburse 5.0 percent.
Like previous years, the central bank in the new policy kept focusing on driving agriculture growth with providing farmers with necessary financial support from institutional sources. The credit policy also asked for special attention of banks and financial institutions to protect farmers from the adverse impact of climate change.
Referring to various initiatives of the central bank to foster agriculture credit growth, Dr Atiur said Taka-10 bank accounts for farmers, Taka 200-crore refinancing scheme for rural entrepreneurs and special attention to finance export-alternative farm produces helped increase fund flow to agriculture and rural economy.
But, the governor pointed out that despite all of these initiatives, credit flow to agriculture sector remained as low as 4.0 percent of the total loan portfolio of banks.
He, however, hoped that the banks and financial institutions would expand and increase their credit programme for the farmers and rural people as the central bank would continue its policy for driving inclusive growth.
