Centre to revive land development banks in three months

The central government is planning to revive land development banks within three months to provide loans to the farmers for capital investment.

"The land development bank is an effective mechanism to provide loans to the farmers for capital investment. Today, this bank has become financially weak. Considering this, the government is planning to revive this bank in three months," said Sharad Pawar, Union agriculture minister on Sunday.

"India is an agriculture-oriented country and 64 per cent of its population is dependent on agriculture. But, the provision for agriculture and irrigation sectors was 1.5 per cent and 0.35 per cent, respectively. Considering this, the Union government has decided to increase the provision for agricultural loans from Rs 80,000 crore to Rs 1.60 lakh crore," he said.

Pawar said from cultivation to marketing the farmers throughout the country suffered losses around Rs 55,000 crore per year.

"To avoid this, the central government has concentrated on creating agricultural goods processing, cold storage and export mechanism. As a part of this, international-level market terminals are being set up at Nashik, Mumbai and Nagpur. Terminal market will also be set up at Aurangabad next year," he said.

In wake of the large scale suicide by the debt ridden farmers reported from Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Punjab, this step seems to be promising.

Also, measures are being taken to reduce the production cost, give good price for the agricultural goods and export the produce to the global market.