Bangladesh Bank (BB) Sunday asked the commercial banks to provide farmers with adequate credit support to boost agriculture production in the country.
The credit should be disbursed without any harassment and in time so that the target is achieved by the end of this fiscal year, a review meeting at the central bank headquarters in Dhaka was told.
General Manager of BB Agricultural Credit Department Provash Chandra Mallick chaired the meeting with senior executives of eight public banks.
The eight state-owned banks are Sonali Bank Limited, Janata Bank Limited, Agrani Bank Limited, Rupali Bank Limited, BASIC Bank Limited, Bangladesh Development Bank Limited (BDBL), Bangladesh Krishi Bank (BKB) and Rajshahi Krishi Unnayan Bank (RAKUB).
The BB advised the banks to set branch-wise monthly disbursement targets and ensure that the monthly targets are achieved.
The central bank started reviewing the agriculture credit performance after the first quarter - when all the scheduled banks together disbursed 19.62 per cent of the annual target of Tk 175.50 billion, according to latest statistics.
The BB senior officials are set to meet senior officials of both private commercial banks (PCBs) and foreign commercial banks (FCBs) Monday to review their performance.
"The review meetings are to know about the overall agro-credit situation ahead of the upcoming boro and robi cropping season," a senior official of BB told the FE.
He said the BB instructed the banks to expedite disbursements form now to meet the growing demand ahead of the season.
The farm credit disbursement grew by 7.65 per cent in the first three months of the FY17 as compared to the same period last fiscal year due to continuous persuasion of the bankers by the BB, he added.
Disbursements rose to Tk 34.44 billion in the July-September period of the FY 17 from Tk 31.99 billion in same period of the previous fiscal, the BB data showed.
Of the quarterly disbursement, eight state-owned banks disbursed Tk 12.90 billion and the remaining Tk 21.54 billion was disbursed by the PCBs and FCBs.
The recovery of farm loans also rose to Tk 35.42 billion during the period under the review from Tk 31.18 billion in the same period of the previous fiscal.
"We've already strengthened our monitoring and supervision to ensure credit facilities for each interested farmers across the country without any harassment," said another official.
   siddique.islam@gmail.com
BB starts agro-credit monitoring ahead of major crop seasons
Siddique Islam | Published: October 31, 2016 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00
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