JAMMU, FEBRUARY 28: Chief Secretary, Atal Dulloo, while taking stock of progress registered under different credit linked schemes of the Agriculture Production Department (APD) remarked that agriculture sector in J&K has an additional credit potential of around Rs 3000 crore if tapped optimally by the financial institutions here.

Besides Principal Secretary, APD and MD, J&K Bank, the meeting was attended by MD, HADP/JKCIP; DG, Budget; Deputy Commissioners; HoDs of APD; Convenor, UTLBC; representatives from BISAG-N and other concerned officers while outstation officers participated virtually.

The Chief Secretary impressed upon the Deputy Commissioners and the concerned department to be in close coordination with J&K Bank in order to enhance the approval and disbursement rate of the applications. He said that there is still greater potential of growth in this sector as the banks could tap additional Rs 3000 crore business by laying more focus on it. He advised the financial institutions to tap this potential for there is lesser NPA rate as well.

He maintained that almost half of the applications received by the department on the portal should be credit linked as the products are highly attractive guaranteeing the interest subvention and moratorium period that is not available anywhere else.

Dulloo enjoined upon the Bank to designate some of their best human resources to look after the progress on these schemes to improve their uptake and increase their number proportionate to the total number of applicants registered on the official portal. He also reviewed scheme-wise progress and pendency in each district and enquired from respective DCs about the reasons of poor performance, if found anywhere. He took note of the applications pending from last more than 100 days and directed the banks to clear the backlog without any further delay .

He also laid emphasis on creation of awareness among the public besides handholding them by helping in generating successful DPRs thereby increasing the rate of approval of their applications. He asked for assisting people to have fair idea about the schemes, credit and benefits available for them based upon their areas of interest.

The Chief Secretary also sought suggestions from the Department , DCs and the Bank officers about the measures needed to be taken to improve the overall performance of these schemes for these are in vogue now for the 2nd year. He asked them to further improve the progress in high density plantation, distribution of smart cards under KCC, KCC term loans, PM Kisan, AIF, AHIDF, PMFBY and other similar schemes.

On the occasion, Principal Secretary, APD, Shailendra Kumar, informed the meeting that the Department targets coverage of 13 lakh farmers under KCC scheme which currently hovers at around 10.82 lakh active customers. He also revealed that the Department in coordination with the banks is in a process of streamlining the credit availing facility for farmers by developing an IT solution named ‘Khetscore’ to determine the credit worthiness of each farm. He made out that the same would be done based upon historical data, external risk assessment and taking of geographical factors into account.

MD, HADP, Rahul Yadav, informed the meeting about other measures being taken by the Department to improve the uptake of these schemes by the farmers. He also threw light on the overall progress of these schemes over the past few months.

The MD also enumerated certain measures including launching of IT tools like credit scheme advisor, DPR generating portal and Grievance redressal portal with banks for real time registration and tracking of credit related grievances by the banks and administration on the directions of the Chief Secretary.

Later, the Chief Secretary had live demonstration of these developing applications as given by the BISAG-N. He asked them to converge all the Agriculture related tools and apps on a single platform which would give access to them with ease and comfort.

He also released a number of publications depicting the progress and success stories of HADP and other programmes to revolutionise Agriculture sector besides increasing the farmers income manifold across the UT of J&K.