Banks to open 50 lakh new agricultural accounts in 2006-07

New Delhi, Dec 12 (UNI) The overall target for commercial banks, Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) and Cooperative Banks for opening new agricultural accounts has been fixed at 50 lakh during 2006-07, the government informed the Rajya Sabha today.

Against the target, 40.32 lakh accounts were opened till October this year by public and private sector commercial banks, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said.

With regard to co-operative banks, Mr. Chidambaram said these banks fall under the jurisdiction of state governments, and the Central government cannot fix targets for them.

The minister, however, announced that based on the Vaidyanathan Committee recommendations, the Centre had worked out a Rs 13,596 crore package for providing rural credit to states.

''The Centre has invited states to sign a Memorandum of Understanding under this arrangement,'' he said, adding that six states had already signed MoUs while another seven had shown their willingness for doing so.

Mr. Chidambaram also informed that only yesterday, the government had signed a one billion dollar loan agreement with the ADB. ''This will greatly ease the situation for providing agricultural credit to farmers,'' he said.

Replying to a supplementary, he said the quantity of credit from RRBs and cooperative banks would be doubled in three years.

Conceding that a large number of farmers were still raising resources from village moneylenders, he said he had written to state chief ministers to launch stringent action against those moneylenders who were not registered and charging usurious interest.

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