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Union food minister Pralhad Joshi on Monday launched a Rs 1,000 crore credit guarantee scheme to help farmers easily access post-harvest loans by leveraging electronic warehouse receipts. The scheme aims to reduce banks' reluctance to lend against electronic negotiable warehouse receipts (e-NWRs) issued by Warehousing Development and Regulatory Authority (WDRA) registered repositories. "We have provided a corpus fund of Rs 1,000 crore. The objective is to encourage banks to lend loans with a liberal approach," the minister said at the scheme's launch. Food Secretary Sanjeev Chopra highlighted the significant potential for expansion, noting that current post-harvest lending stands at just Rs 40,000 crore out of total agricultural lending of Rs 21 lakh crore. Currently, lending against e-NWRs is a mere Rs 4,000 crore. "We are hoping that post-harvest lending will grow to Rs 5.5 lakh crore over the next 10 years," Chopra said, emphasising that the target is achievable with coordinated
The Enforcement Directorate on Wednesday conducted searches at multiple locations in Delhi and adjoining areas as part of an alleged bank loan fraud linked money laundering probe against former promoters of liquidated dairy major Kwality Ltd, official sources said. About a dozen places are being raided under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), the sources said. The money laundering case stems from a 2020 FIR of the CBI against Kwality Ltd and its directors filed in September, 2020 for allegedly cheating a consortium of 10 banks, led by the Bank of India, for an amount over Rs 1,400 crore through alleged bloating of financial statements and diversion of loan funds. The premises of the former promoters of the company, directors and other key persons are being searched, the sources said. Kwality Ltd. started as an ice-cream manufacturing company and diversified into milk-based products. Its former directors include Sanjay Dhingra, Siddhant Gupta, Arun ...
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday said bank interest rates are very stressful for some people, and steps are needed to make them affordable. Amid widespread concerns about a possible slowdown in economic growth, the finance minister assured that the government is fully aware of the domestic and global challenges, and added that there is no need to have "undue concerns". "What is important is when you look at India's growth requirements, and you can have so many different voices coming out and saying the cost of borrowing is really very stressful, and a time when we want industries to ramp up and move (to) building capacities, bank interest rates will have to be far more affordable," Sitharaman said. Speaking at the annual business and economic conclave organised by SBI, the minister also asked banks to concentrate on their core function of giving loans and added that the "misselling" of insurance products also indirectly adds to the cost of borrowing for an entity.