The central bank will sit with commercial banks at district, divisional and regional levels from next month to expedite both disbursement and recovery of agricultural credits, officials said.
Ten branch offices of the Bangladesh Bank (BB) will organise the daylong review meetings from the second week of January 2015, aiming to achieve the agricultural credit-disbursement target by the end of the current 2014-15 fiscal year (FY).
The central bank has taken the latest move against the backdrop of a downturn in the farm-credit disbursement and recovery in the recent months.
"We want to review the overall farm-credit situation across the country through arranging the meetings," a BB senior official told the FE Saturday while explaining the main objective of the drive.
Besides, regular review meetings with the banks will be continued to bring dynamism in the agriculture sector by providing adequate financial support to the interested farmers.
He also said the BB has already strengthened its monitoring and supervision to ensure the credit facilities for each interested farmer across the country, without any harassment usually associated with the lending process at grassroots level.
"We'll not allow any negligence of the banks in disbursement of agricultural loans," the central banker warned.
Lending to farmers decreased nearly 4.0 per cent in the first five months of the FY 15 compared to the corresponding period of the previous fiscal.
The disbursement of farm loans came down to Tk 52.88 billion in the July-November period of the FY 15 from Tk 55.01 billion in the previous corresponding period, according to the central bank statistics.
Of the Tk 52.88 billion, six state-owned banks disbursed Tk 29.97 billion, and the remaining Tk 22.91 billion was disbursed by the private commercial banks (PCBs) and foreign commercial banks (FCBs).
All scheduled banks have achieved more than 34 per cent of their annual agricultural loan-disbursement targets for FY 15.
The total sum of agri-loan is fixed at Tk 155.50 billion for the fiscal.
Talking to the FE, another BB official said the central bank is now working to achieve the farm credit-disbursement target by the end of this fiscal year.
"We've already taken different initiatives to achieve the target by the end of this fiscal year through boosting disbursement of the agricultural loan," he noted.
The recovery of farm loan, however, fell more than 4.0 per cent to Tk 58.50 billion during the period under review from Tk 60.95 billion in the same period of the previous fiscal, the BB data showed.
siddique.islam@gmail.com
