Soft loan facilities for farmers are essential to buy equipment like tractors and power tillers, as currently they have to rely on rental equipment which erodes their profit. It is quite clear that cultivation in this country is getting more mechanised as tractors, power tillers, combined harvesters, planters and other types of equipment are being increasingly used.
The annual demand for tractors at present is approximately 4,000 units and 90,000 units for power tillers. The Metal (Pvt) Limited Chairman Aminul Islam said, mechanisation is increasing agricultural output and is helping to meet the increased demand for food. He also said that use of equipment is changing the nature of local cultivation and the farmers can now grow more crops giving less effort. He said despite positive aspects of using tractors, it is beyond capacity of the farmers as a tractor costs Tk 700,000 to Tk 800,000. Some manufacturers of agricultural equipment provide soft loan facilities to the consumers at instalments for making tractors affordable to the users.
According to the Bangladesh Agriculture Development Corporation (BADC), adaptation of technology in farming is helping the country to meet increasing demand for food. It said, technology is being extensively used in agriculture at a time when agricultural land is shrinking. It is helping to extract maximum soil fertility during cultivation. The overall production of rice, vegetables and other crops are increasing by 10.0 per cent every year on an average, as per information released by the BADC. The farmers are now totally dependent on drum seeders, power tillers, tractors, combined harvesters and some other innovations in mechanised farming, though these are new to our cultivation system. But it is still beyond the affordability of most of the farmers to buy farming equipment due to their high prices. On the other hand, the farmers cannot have bank loan facilities as they cannot provide collateral securities against their loans which is the first and foremost precondition for availing bank loans. To grow more crops, banks should extend soft loan facilities to the farmers who have to rely on rental equipment which eats up a sizeable portion of their profit.
Ashek Ahmed
lks.shuvn@gmail.com
Soft loans for mechanised farming
FE Team | Published: July 03, 2015 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00
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