From now onwards, all scheduled banks will provide agricultural loans to farmers for cultivating four new crops – Saudi Arabian dates and Vietnamese coconuts, sweet corns, and coffee.
A letter in this regard was issued by the Agricultural Credit Department of the Bangladesh Bank on Tuesday to the chief executives of all scheduled banks.
As per the agriculture-rural credit policy for the current financial year, a farmer can avail of Tk10.05 lakh in loan for the cultivation of Saudi Arabian dates and Tk4.29 lakh for Vietnamese coconuts.
Besides, each farmer can take loans worth Tk66,000 and Tk3.84 lakh per acre for cultivating Vietnamese sweet corn and coffee respectively.
The loans are available at any time but loans for sweet corn will be available from 15 November to 15 December. The time of repayment for these loans will start after the harvest.
For the current fiscal year, the central bank set a loan disbursement target of Tk28,390 crore. Of this, state-owned banks will disburse Tk11,045 crore and private banks will distribute Tk17,346 crore.
In the last fiscal year, a loan of Tk25,511 crore was disbursed against the target of Tk26,292 crore.
As the Covid-19 epidemic outbreak intensified this year, the central bank announced a stimulus package worth Tk5,000 crore, of which Tk4,295 was disbursed till June.
Besides, on 14 September, the Bangladesh Bank introduced a second-phase stimulus loan for the agriculture sector. In this year too, the central bank has formed a Tk3,000-crore refinancing scheme.
From this fund, banks can provide collateral-free individual loans of up to Tk2 lakh to small, marginal, and sharecroppers. The interest rate on the loan remains the same at 4%. The second phase fund will run till 30 June next year.
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