Bhubaneswar: State Bank of India is gearing up to conduct a farmers’ meet across the country June 8. The bank hopes to hold the event across its 15,500 branches in the country, which also includes 705 branches in the state.
“During the meet, branches will receive applications for fresh loans as well as those for renewal or enhancement of existing loans from farmers across all branches,” an official privy to the development said. He added that the bank will reach out in particular to the 520 branches situated in rural and unbanked village panchayats. The meet is expected to help ameliorate issues with the farming sector, the official said.
“In view of the upcoming Kharif season, we have instructed branches to actively pursue lending to farmers in line with the scale of finance fixed for various crops. For crop loans upto Rs3 lakh, the effective interest rate is only 4 per cent per annum. With the anticipation of normal rainfall by meteorological department, we hope to see sound credit offtake during this season,” Rajnish Kumar, Managing Director of National Banking Group, SBI said.
“Agriculture had witnessed growth of 4.1 per cent last year in the country and the trend is likely to continue,” Kumar added.
As on March 31, 2017, SBI had reported growth of Rs9,000 crore under agriculture financing with improvement in recovery. SBI’s market share under the same has increased to 29 per cent, the official said.
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