The State Bank of India, the country’s largest lender, will organize farmers’ meets at 15,500 rural and semi-urban branches across the country on June 8.
The SBI hopes to reach out to at least 10 lakh farmers through these meets on the day. During the meet, SBI branches will receive applications for fresh loans as well as applications for renewal or enhancement of existing loan.
At a time when the farm sector is going through a period of stress in various states of the country, the SBI has taken this initiative to reach out to farmers to smoothen the flow in credit for agriculture.
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Rajnish Kumar, Managing Director, National Banking Group, SBI, said that “the branches have been instructed to pursue lending to farmers in line with the scale of finance fixed for various crops. As the MET department has predicted normal monsoon, we expect credit off-take to be good this season.”
“Agriculture had witnessed a growth of 4.1 percent last year in the country and the trend is likely to continue,” Kumar added.
As of March 31, 2017, the SBI had reported a growth of Rs. 9,000 crore. under agriculture financing with improvement in recovery. The bank’s market share in agriculture finance has increased to 29 percent.