Oppn flays govt for not giving farmer loans at lower rates

New Delhi, Dec 14 (UNI) The Opposition in Rajya Sabha today criticised the Government for not providing loans to farmers at lower rates and said its policies were creating millionares whereas the poor were becoming poorer.

Earlier, Finance Minister P Chidambaram introduced the supplementary demands for grants (General) and demands for excess grants (general) for discussion and voting in the House to meet the additional expenditure of various Government departments, organisations and towards implementation of various schemes.

The supplementary demands for 2004-05 were for Rs 33,826.56 crore and those for 2006-07 were for Rs 21,823.92 crore.

Initiating the debate on Appropriation (No.5) Bill, 2005 and Appropriation (No.6) Bill 2006, Mr Surendra Lath of BJP criticised the Government for not providing loans to farmers at lower rates which pushed them to commit suicide as even NGOs had been giving loans to farmers at very high rates of up to 20 per cent and committing atrocities on them at the time of recovery.

Industries being put up in special economic zones were extending loans at lower rates while farmers, who comprised about 70 per cent of the population and contributed in achieving higher GDP, were paying high rates of interest on credit.

He said the UPA government was not giving proper attention to the farming community due to which there was increasing trend in the country in import of food items. ''This government's policies are creating millionares and billionares whereas the poor is getting poorer and the common man is not benefitting in any way.'' Mr Lath said a handful of people were enjoying the fruits and now was the time when government had to define the priorities.

Big industries were getting credit at much lower rates of 6-7 per cent whereas SSIs were paying higher rates of interest at about 12-13 per cent. The Government should ensure credit to SSI units between 8-10 per cent. Even the handmade soap manufacturers had to pay 16 per cent excise duty and yet they were wanted to compete with MNCs.

Mr Lath wanted to know what plans the Government was making in the XIth Plan for the welfare of the farmers.

Supporting the supplementary demands, Mr Santosh Bagrodia of Congress questioned the need to bring supplementary demands almost twice in a year when the Budget was already presented for the complete year.

He pointed out that during the NDA regime, the maximum number of SSIs faced closure during 1998-2004. After UPA government came into power, the Finance Minister had increased the funding power of PSU banks by 20 per cent a year and about 16.74 lakh people got the credit. Of this, 17.5 per cent credit went to SSI units and 30 per cent was general credit, while most of the credit had gone to service sector.

Defending the Finance Minister, he said every policy of the Government was helping the common man. During UPA's rule, GDP kept going up in the last two years and inflation remained in the bracket of 5 per cent. GDP remained in the range of 8-9-10 per cent.

Mr Bagrodia said during NDA's rule, when GDP was 3-4 per cent, inflation was 5 per cent.

Mr Bagrodia expressed unhappiness in not getting the expected results from the agricultural sector and asked the Government to introduce more and more farmer-friendly schemes to make the second green revolution a success.

Dr K Malaisamy (AIADMK), Mr Nand Kishore Yadav (SP) and Mr C Ramachandraiah (TDP) also participated in the debate on supplementary demands.

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