No waiver of farm loans as yet, says Haryana govt

Chandigarh, June 16 (UNI) The Haryana government today clarified that it was contemplating on a farm loan waiver scheme on the lines of Tamil Nadu, but no policy decision had so far been taken in this regard.

The clarification by Finance Minister Birender Singh came in the wake of an impression in the state as if the Government had already decided to waive off the loans.

''It has been misconstrued by certain sections in the print media and made to appear as if the Haryana government has already decided to waive off the loans which farmers owe to cooperative banks and cooperative financial institutions,'' Mr Singh said.

This, he said, had unnecessarily caused laxity on the part of agencies in recovery of dues and at the same time given an excuse to the loanees to withhold payments to the cooperative banks and institutions.

The Minister said that in his speech at a State Level Bankers Conference held on June 1, he had spelt out the government's intention to study the Tamil Nadu pattern of the farm loan waiver but no policy decision had been taken in this regard.

He said the Haryana government had sought the details of the scheme from Tamil Nadu government to see if it could be of any help to the state.

''Ours being a pro-poor and pro-farmer government, any scheme, which could bring relief to the farmers and mitigate their hardships without jeopardising the viability of our financial institutions, especially the cooperative banks, would be welcome,'' he said.

However, so far the state government had not even identified the ''broad contours of what our policy will be like,'' he said.

Therefore, the impression that the government had decided to waive off the farm loans of the cooperative banks needs to be dispelled by the agencies as well as the media.

UNI MA DKS KP1452