Punjab National Bank, whose total advances to agriculture segment stood at over Rs 34,000 crore in the first quarter of current financial year, is holding ‘Mega Recovery Camps’ all over India aimed at small agricultural loans.
The bank is reaching out to small agricultural borrowers in distress and trying to help them repay the outstanding money by part waivers and rescheduling of installments.
Agricultural advances below Rs 10 lakh taken qualify for being taken up at these camps. Such camps have been organised in Kanpur, Lucknow and Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh.
“Over the last two months, we have organised such camps at around 20 centres pan-India and at least 15 more such camps would be organised at different places before the campaign is wrapped up,” PNB executive director Usha Ananthasubramanian told Business Standard.
She informed the bank had not set any target for the number of borrowers or amount to be settled in this campaign.
“We just want to give an opportunity to small agriculturists and farmers to unburden themselves of the outstanding loans, while we also clean our books. We have received excellent response from the borrowers,” she added.
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In UP, the total agriculture outstanding stood at Rs 7,623 crore at the end of June 2011.
In Lucknow Circle, the bank had received about 835 applications for the participation in the camp, while the total amount was over Rs 5 crore.
Commenting on credit off-take in the wake of hardening of interest rates of late, Ananthasubramanian admitted credit growth in the banking industry had slowed a bit, but on-going projects continued to roll.
“This year, we are targeting credit growth of 22 per cent vis-à-vis 24 per cent last year. However, our growth would still be higher than the growth forecast of 18 per cent for the banking industry by RBI,” she added.