SBI's agri advances in state increase 4-fold

Bank Plans to open 50 agriculture finance cells

The advances of State Bank of India (SBI) to the agriculture sector in Gujarat have increased four-fold in the 2003-04 fiscal to Rs 257.59 crore compared with advances of Rs 65 crore in the previous year.

The bank, in a bid to prop up agriculture sector lending, has also opened an agriculture finance cell at Bavla in Ahmedabad. During the fiscal, the bank issued as many as 16,539 Kisan Credit Cards to farmers at an aggregate limit of Rs 47.54 crore.

The agriculture finance cell at Bavla, opened by Ashok Kini, managing director and group executive (national banking), SBI, was the first of 50 such cells that the bank plans to open in different parts of the state by the year end.

The bank has tied up with tractor firm Tractor and Farm Equipment Ltd to finance of tractors. Signed in September 2003, the bank financed 375 tractors under the scheme by the year end, aggregating Rs 10.79 crore.

SBI officials said a special scheme called 'Dairy plus' was also formulated by the bank for financing milk producing cattle to members of co-operative milk societies. During the year, 2,563 cattle were financed for Rs 7.46 crore.

The largest public sector bank in the country has also decided to strengthen its agriculture sector financing by recruiting as many as 500 graduates with specialisations in different areas of agriculture. All these appointments will be done in the present fiscal itself across the country.

"In this fiscal over 500 specialists in various aspects of agriculture will be posted in branches of the bank to strengthen agri financing," Kini said at Bavla last week.

SBI has selected Amul Dairy to implement its Special Swarna Gram Swarajya Yojana project for financing milk animals to 7,500 families under the poverty line in Kheda district.

S V Singh, general manager, development and personal banking, said while 1,000 applications have already been processed, another 3,000 have been lined up.