Finance minister to meet Nabard brass today

Finance minister P Chidambaram will meet Ranjana Kumar, the chairperson of the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard), and other top officials tomorrow.

The meeting will be attended by Y S P Thorat, managing director, Nabard, executive directors and chief general managers.

The finance minister is also expected to take stock of the loans granted to new farmers by public sector banks, sources said.

The finance minister in his budget had announced a series of measures to improve flow of credit to agriculture sector so as to double it in the next three years from Rs 80,000 crore in 2003-04 to Rs 1,60,000 crore by 2006-07.

Leading public sector banks' credit disbursements to agriculture and debt relief to farmers during the first six months of the current fiscal stood at around Rs 36,933 crore, said a report prepared by Nabard.

Of the total credit disbursed, loans given to new farmers stood at Rs 12,468 crore. Report for October reveals that leading public banks have delivered agricultural loans of around Rs 6,485 crore in October 2004. The new loans sanctioned in October were Rs 2,767 crore.

State Bank of India (SBI), in the first six months of the current fiscal, disbursed agriculture loans of Rs 5,843 crore and loans granted to new farmers stood at Rs 2,544 crore.