1.87 lakh farmers to benefit from loan waiver

  • 01/07/2008

  • Indian Express (Mumbai)

Pune June 30 The central government loan waiver scheme will see Rs 636.23 crore being waived off for 1.87 lakh beneficiaries from the district. With the list of beneficiaries being put up at all banks with June 30 being the last day, collector Chandrakant Dalvi who had a meeting with all the bank representatives on Monday, said that all these farmers will be eligible for fresh loans. Of the 1.87 lakh farmers, 1.31 lakh are the small and marginal farmers and the amount being waived off for these farmers is Rs 468.87 crore while for "other farmers' under the one time settlement scheme, the district has a list of 55,836 beneficiaries with a loan waiver amount of Rs 167.36 crore, said Dalvi. The list was procured from the bank representatives. The debt waiver will benefit the small (uptp 5 acres) and marginal (upto 2.5 acres) farmers by way of waiver of short term production loans and overdue installments for the term loans availed by them. There are also clear directives in case of "other farmers' there will be a one time settlement (OTS) scheme under which the farmer will be given a rebate of 25 percent of the eligible amount subject to the condition that the farmer pays the balance of 75 per cent of the eligible amount. In case of multiple term loans each loan will be treated separately and the guidelines will be made applicable to them. Sanitation: Pune to follow Kolhapur model Pune district might see itself in the footsteps of Kolhapur for implementing the Nirmal Gram Yojana which sees each household having a toilet block improving the sanitation level in the district. Announcing the annual credit plan for the district, district collector Chandrakant Dalvi, said that he would want Pune to achieve this status. For this he wants to take the help of Self Help Group members who can be taught to construct toilet blocks in their households and they could then be called as "Nirmal Bachat gat", he said. The annual credit plan has allocated Rs 60 crore for the self- help groups in the district. "As of now there are 40,000 groups and we want to increase it further, he said. The collector wants to take the help of Zilla Parishad and the SHG members to achieve this goal. "If we were to just consider the SHGs, there would be 4 lakh beneficiaries,''he said. There are 1.5 lakh toilet blocks in the district and we want to achieve 90 per cent, said Dalvi.