Agri loan disbursement target likely to exceed in 2016-17

The central bank predicts that the disbursement of agriculture loans will exceed the target in the current fiscal 2016-'17.

"The trends of recent credit disbursement indicate that the disbursement target for the current fiscal is likely to exceed," Bangladesh Bank (BB) chief spokesperson Subhankar Saha told BSS today.

All specialized, state-owned and private commercial banks, including foreign commercial banks operating in the country, have already disbursed 69.28 per cent agriculture credit in seven months from July 2016 to January 2017, according to BB statistics.

In the current fiscal, agriculture and non-farm rural credit disbursement target for schedule banks is Taka 17,550 crore, which is 7.01 percent higher than that of the previous fiscal. The banks disbursed a total of Taka 12,158.71 crore till January.

Subhankar Saha said the country has been able to exceed the agriculture loan disbursement target in the last couple of years due to the BB's strict monitoring over the firm loan disbursement trend of the schedule banks.

Every month, BB holds a meeting with scheduled banks to expedite agriculture loan disbursement activities, he added.

BB's disbursement target was Taka 14,595 crore for 2013-14 fiscal, but the disbursement surpassed the target and stood at Taka 16,037 crore.

Fiscals 2014-'15 and 2015-'16 also followed the similar trend with disbursement of Taka 15,978 crore and 17,646 crore against the targets of Taka 15,550 crore and Taka 16,400 crore respectively.

According to the BB data, the disbursement of agricultural credit and non-farm rural credit has increased by 19.85 percent and 28.75 percent respectively during July-January in 2016-'17 compared to that in the corresponding period in 2015-'16.

The loan recovery rate in the agriculture sector and non-farm rural credit increased by 13.40 percent and 6.28 percent respectively during July-January in 2016-'17 compared to the corresponding period of the preceding year.

During the period, banks recovered Taka 10,815.05 crore from the total disbursement of agriculture and non-farm rural credit.

Source: BSS