BHOPAL: The wait for waiving farm loan in the state may get stretched to next year. The state government needs Rs 32,000 crore to write off loan of farmers eligible for the scheme. The said amount could not be provisioned in the current financial year by the state government. Finance department, citing the economic condition of the state, has told Chief Minister Kamal Nath that it is not possible to waive farm loan of all the remaining farmers.
Nath has asked additional chief secretary Anurag Jain to prepare a comprehensive plan for farm loan waiver. The departments of agriculture and cooperatives will be implementing the note prepared by Jain. According to sources, the government for the current year could make provision of Rs 10,000 crore but if it wants to arrange more funds then it would have to stop its several developmental works. The government has so far waived farm loan of around 20 lakh farmers.
The process of waiving loan of around 5 lakh farmers is going on and a sum of Rs 5000 crore has been spent. There are still around 30 lakh farmers whose farm loan is to be waived. The state government has to return more than Rs 2,000 crore to cooperatives department. The farm loans waived so far by the government are mainly related to non-performing assets (NPAs). It got discount from the banks to waive NPA loans.
That is the reason behind waiving loans of cooperative banks. The loans which are yet to be waived are mainly current accounts for which the government will have to provide full money to the banks. The government is not in a position to provide such a big amount as of now. The decision to execute the scheme of loan waiver district wise has been taken by the government as it could not arrange huge amount of money now for farm loan waiver.
