Bangladesh Bank is likely to ask scheduled banks to keep withhold their recovery of installments of farm loans from the flood-affected farmers in 17 districts for three months to six months during and after the calamity. The BB will issue a circular to managing directors and chief executive officers of all banks in two or three days asking them to disburse fresh farm loans to the flood-affected farmers without recovering the previous farm loans.
The central bank will also ask the banks to speed up their loan disbursement programme for cultivating alternative crops in the flood-affected farmers.
The flood-affected farmers of 17 districts including Kurigram, Nilphamari, Lalmonirhat, Gaibandha, Rangpur, Bogra, Sirajganj, Tangail, Jamalpur, Dhaka, Manikganj, Munshiganj, Faridpur, Rajbari and Sylhet will get the benefit of the central bank’s relaxed farm loan policy.
A BB official told New Age on Tuesday that some deputy commissioners of flood affected districts had recently requested the central bank to relax the farm loan policy for their respective areas.
Meanwhile, some central bank officials feared that the defaulted farm loans would increase more in the coming days as the farmers would have to count huge lose due to the flood.
A large number of farmers will become defaulters in the 17 districts if they do not get fresh farm loans from the banks without repaying their previous loans, the official said.
According to the latest BB data, the defaulted loans increased by Tk 1,442.62 crore to Tk 7,751.57 crore as of July 31, 2014 from Tk 6,308.95 crore as of June 30, 2014.
Against the backdrop, the central bank would relax the farm loan policy for the flood-affected farmers to save them from defaulting situation.
Microcredit Regulatory Authority had earlier asked lending organisations to keep withheld recovery of installments of existing loans from the flood-affected borrowers in 17 districts for at least two months during and after the calamity.
-With New Age input
