UP FM lauds Nabard for drawing credit plans of all 75 districts

LUCKNOW: Uttar Pradesh finance minister Suresh Khanna released the State Focus Paper for Uttar Pradesh for the year 2021-22 at a state credit seminar held at Nabard, Lucknow recently.

In his address, Khanna lauded the efforts of Nabard (National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development) for preparation of potential- linked credit plans for all the 75 districts of the state and aggregating them to form credit potential projections under the priority sector activities.

The minister advised all the banks that they may adopt a positive and systematic approach for lending to farmers as actual credit was consistently falling short of the lending targets under agriculture and allied sectors. This, he said, was important in an agrarian state such as UP which has more than 65% agriculture dependent population.

Bankers and other senior officials of the state government were also present during the

event.

He also laid stress on credit deposit ratio of the state at least up to the national level with special emphasis on districts where the CD ratio was below 40%. He said that with financial assistance from Nabard, the state government would bring an additional 13.6 lakh hectare area under irrigation, which would spur development and create additional credit demand.

The minister congratulated Nabard on its developmental work. Khanna also felicitated farmers, women, NGOs and banks for their impactful work in the areas of watershed and tribal development, SHGs, FPOs, financial inclusion in the “Gramin Samriddhi Samman Samaroh” which immediately followed the state credit seminar.

Khanna also handed over sanction letters from Nabard for multi-service facilities in 100 primary agriculture credit societies and mobile van to an FPO.

Earlier, welcoming the minister and other dignitaries on the occasion, Shankar A. Pande, chief general manager of Nabard, stated that for developing the agrarian and unorganised sectors in Uttar Pradesh, banks must focus on credit delivery through proven strategies such as Kisan Credit Cards, SHGs, JLGs and FPOs.