In an attempt to ease pressure from farmers and bankers alike, The Chief minister met State level Bankers’ Committee officials and asured them of pauying back the farmers’ loans soon after the 2017-18 budget was passed in the state Assembly.
lauding the banks for playing an important role in development, Yogi said, “The state government took a historic decision to waive off crop loan up to Rs 1 lakh of over 86 lakh small and marginal farmers. Banks have played pivotal role in its implementation. Once the 2017-18 budget is passed, the money will be transferred to the banks. Till we pass the budget, banks should not issue recovery notice to farmers,” Yogi said while addressing a special State level Bankers’ Committee meet in lucknow on Wednesday.
Yogi also released a booklet ‘Uttar Pradesh Government Crop loan Redemption for Upliftment and Sustainable Development of Small and Marginal farmers’ on this occasion.
The CM said that 78 per cent of the state’s population still lived in villages and of these 93 per cent were small and marginal farmers. “During natural calamities they take loans from banks but are unable to repay them. Government’s one-time settlement scheme in form of loan waiver up to Rs 1 lakh will help them to tide over difficult situation,” Yogi said.
The CM complemented banks for taking the scheme to a logical end. |It is the responsibility of banks to ensure that money reaches the account of beneficiary farmer. To make the transaction transparent, bank accounts of farmers should be linked with Aadhar and required KYC formality be completed,” he said.
“The scheme will ease financial burden on farmers and they will be able to think of putting their energy in other sectors like dairy, fisheries and horticulture. The Government has a vision to double farm income by 2022. This can only be achieved if there is increase in agriculture income and farmers opted for diversification,” the Chief Ministers said.
Yogi said that as UP has an agriculture-based economy, therefore there was immense possibility of allied industries. Government has introduced new industrial Policy which is based on the mantra of ease of doing business. Unfortunately, the Credit-Deposit (CD) ratio of the state is very low and went down by 9 per cent last year. There are 18 such districts where CD ratio is less than 40 per cent and majority of these districts are in eastern UP.
“The time has come to give a strong industrial boost to eastern UP so that prevailing disparity between east and west could be wiped out,” Yogi said.
Finance minister Rajesh Agarwal said that banks roles in the hollistic development of state cannot be ruled out as they play a key role in improving infrastructure.