Anantapur: Farmers Welfare Association seeks 3% interest waiver on farm loans

Anantapur: Farmers Welfare Association president M Suresh Babu, in a press statement, appealed to the government to instruct banks to pay 2 per cent interest subvention and 1 per cent prompt repayment incentives to farmers who promptly repay their crop loans.

This year all the scheduled banks have collected 7 per cent interest towards crop loan, he said and added the 2 per cent interest subvention and 1 per cent prompt repayment incentive should be credited automatically for farmer who has taken crop loan. This 3 per cent interest waiver is applicable to all farmers who have taken crop loan below Rs 3 lakh.

Agriculture production and farm incomes in India are frequently affected by natural disasters such as droughts, floods, cyclones, storms, and landslides, he said. Susceptibility of agriculture to these disasters is compounded by the outbreak of epidemics and manmade disasters such as fire, sale of spurious seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, price crashes.

He said agricultural insurance was a means of protecting the agriculturist against financial losses due to uncertainties. Unfortunately, farm insurance in the country has not made much headway even though the need to protect farmers from agriculture variability has been a continuing concern of agriculture policy.

Despite technological and economic advancements, the condition of farmers continues to be unstable due to natural calamities and price fluctuations. Farmers, who suffered losses given the crop damage due to hailstorm and rains in the state, have sought "factual" assessment of loss each one of them has suffered, he pointed out.

However, he said agriculture, horticulture and revenue officers calculate loss based on the input cost per hectare of the land.

Farmers in the district were in grim situation with no money in hand and banks refusing to give fresh loans, he said the farmers may struggle to go for cultivation in rabi season, which begins in December.

As all the banks are refusing to give fresh loans because the government failed to release funds towards the waiver of farm loans, he demanded the government to promptly release the interest waiver amount of 3 percent to those farmers who promptly repaid their crop loans.