PACS polls prompt loan waiver scheme
Hyderabad: The State Government is likely to partially implement the farm loan waiver scheme, thanks to the elections to Primary Agricultural Cooperative Societies (PACS) which are scheduled to be held on February 15.
Nearly 18 lakh farmers will cast their votes in the elections.
The Government wants to win elections in 906 cooperative societies. Hence it is learnt that the government may waive loans up to Rs 20,000 taken by farmers. The Government will take a decision on the waiver of loans after consulting the poll authorities, sources told The Hans India.
It may be mentioned here that nearly 40 lakh farmers have been waiting to avail the benefit of the Loan Waiver Scheme for which the State Government earmarked Rs 6,000 crore in the 2019-20 financial year.
Though the government made special allocations for the scheme, no funds were released till date though the current fiscal year will end in just 50 days on March 31.
Top officials of the state Agriculture department attributed the delay in the finalisation of guidelines as the main reason for not implementing the second phase loan waiver scheme. But officials of Finance department said that financial crunch was not permitting the government to implement the scheme.
Soon after coming to power in 2014, Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao had taken up the loan waiver scheme on a priority basis and waived off Rs 17,000 crore loans taken by farmers from the banks.
Farmers who took loans up to Rs 1 lakh got the benefit from the loan waiver scheme implemented between 2014 and 2018. During the 2018 assembly elections, KCR promised to continue the loan-waiver scheme.
Officials said that the departmental committee had prepared required guidelines for the implementing the loan waiver scheme and forwarded the same to the chief minister.
It is estimated that Rs 25,000 crore is required to waive all the loans taken by the farmers.
Like in the previous years, the government is contemplating enforcing the wavier scheme in a phased manner in next four years as it would be difficult to waive the loans at one go with the available financial resources.