'Plans on anvil to introduce post harvest schemes'

The NABARD AGM (DD) (Mangalore) Prasad Rao said plans have been chalked out to introduce post harvest schemes for farmers to ensure that they avail the negotiable warehouses.

Speaking at the quarterly meeting of District Level Review Committee for Banking in Udupi district at Zilla Panchayat here on Thursday, the AGM said the programme is introduced in Kundapur taluk in the initial phase.

The programme will benefit around 5,000 farmers. There are plenty of SRI farmers in the taluk and are supported by NABARD. The mandatory requirement is the availability of the storehouses with scientific storage infrastructures.

The regulatory warehousing authority WDRA (Warehousing Development and Regulatory Authority) should accredit the storehouse. He said there are warehouses which have easy accessibility and basic scientific storage amenities in the district.

There is a need to identify the storehouses at block level. WDRA notifies the commodities like paddy, cashew, rubber and arecanut. He added that funds are provided under Grameen Bhandaran Yojana at 25 per cent subsidy to construct storehouses and also renovation of the existing ones. 

He said the crop loans are an untapped area on which bankers should concentrate. He also stressed that the district administration and revenue departments should issue loan eligibility cards to the farmers.

ZP CEO Prabhakar Sharma said issuing loan eligibility certificate to farmers may be practically difficult as tenancy is abolished in Karnataka. There will be legal issues, he added.

RBI (Bangalore) Lead District Officer A Vijay Kumar said there is a need to inform RBI over ICICI and HDFC banks abstaining from submission of plan of action to reach the stipulated level of CD ratio. The issue will be discussed and actions can be taken against them, he added.

Delivering the keynote address on the occasion, Syndicate Bank (Udupi) Regional Office Deputy General Manager Subramani R said that the total deposits of the banking sector in the district stood at Rs 11,775 crores registering a year to year growth of 15.69 per cent and total advances stood at Rs 6,018 crores with year to year growth of 21.18 per cent as on March 31, 2013. The credit to the deposit ratio improved to 51.11 per cent, he added.

He said during the financial year, 2012-13 banks could disburse loans to the extent of Rs 3202.87 crores against the annual target of Rs 2623.33 crores, thus recording 122.09 per cent achievement, of which, Rs 1,382 crores is disbursed to agriculture sector against a target of Rs 988.55 crores, recording 139.80 per cent achievement. Around Rs 373.98 crores is disbursed to Micro and Small Scale Industry Sector against a target of Rs 352.22 crores.

A sum of Rs 544.54 crores are disbursed to Tertiary Sector against a target of Rs 775.52 crores with 70.22 per cent achievement level. Thus, the total disbursal to priority sector is Rs 2,300.52 crores as against a target of Rs 2,116.29 crores during the financial year 2012-13, which is 108.71 per cent achievement, he added.
All the participating banks have shown good progress in providing banking services in all un-banked villages. Under KCC scheme there is an outstanding level of Rs 175.02 crores covering 22,520 card holders. He also said  that 25,379 SHGs have been credit linked in the district, he said.