From Our Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network
New Delhi, Nov 21: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah called on Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and urged her to take immediate steps to enhance Karnataka’s allocation of short term agricultural (SAO) credit limit at concessional rate of interest by NABARD for the seasonal agricultural operations for the current year.
Siddaramaiah had arrived in Delhi on Wednesday night and met the Union Finance Minister on Thursday.
The Chief Minister was accompanied by State Agriculture Minister N Cheluvarayaswamy, minister Byarati Suresh and his political secretary N Govindaraju.
Siddaramaiah explained to Sitharaman that Karnataka has set a target of disbursing Short Term Agricultural loans of Rs.25,000 crore to 35 lakh farmers for the year 2024-25.
Through the short term Co-Operative Credit structure during the year 2023-24 short term Agricultural loans of Rs.22,902 crore have been disbursed in Karnataka.
The Karnataka State Co-Operative Apex Bank Limited has requested and sent a proposal to NABARD to sanction SAO limit of Rs. 9,162 crore for the year 2024-25 on behalf of Short Term Co-Operative Credit Structure.
The SAO limit sanctioned by NABARD for Karnataka for the last five years, according to the Chief Minister is as follows:
For the year 2023-24, the Chief Minister explained that NABARD has sanctioned SAO concessional limit of Rs.5,600 crore.
For the year 2024-25, as against the Applied Limit of Rs.9,162 crore NABARD has sanctioned SAO concessional Agricultural loan limit of only Rs. 2,340 crore which is 58% less compared to last year.
NABARD has told us that the reason for reduced limit this year is because RBI has allocated less under General Line of Credit.
Karnataka has received very good monsoon rains and the farmers are demanding to enhance the disbursement of SAO loans for their agricultural co-operations.
The drastic reduction in sanctioning SAO loan limit to Karnataka will drastically hamper the disbursement of short term agricultural co-operation loans in Karnataka for the year 2024-25, he added.