With a motive to sensitize financial institutions/ banks on their role in ensuring flexible flow of credit to farmers and farming organisations, a District Level Bankers Seminar was held today at Mini Secretariat, Shopian under Holistic Agriculture Development Programme (HADP) by the Agriculture Production Department.
The seminar was jointly presided over by District Development Commissioner (DDC) Shopian, Faz Lul Haseeb and Director Horticulture, Kashmir, Ghulam Rasool Mir.District heads of agri- allied departments, banks, large numbers of farmers, FPOs, heads of financial institutions besides functionaries of other concerned departments were present in the seminar.
Speaking on the occasion, Chief Horticulture Officer, Mohd Ramzan War, said that a total of 47 schemes/ projects have been identified under the HADP and sensitised banks on their role in ensuring credit linkage to farmers and farmer organisations.
District Development Manager, NABARD, Rouf Ahmad Zargar thorough PPT presented detailed awareness on various agriculture credit linkage schemes, and enumerated the role of Banks on providing credit linkage to FPOs.
During the programme, a detailed discussion was held on various issues including identification of beneficiaries, eligibility and benefits under different schemes, role of FPOs, flow of credit to farmers under government sponsored schemes and various other issues.
DDC on the occasion, instructed banks that for achieving the desired targets under the Agriculture linked credit schemes, the bankers have an important role to play by providing hassle free credit to the farmers and all hurdles and loopholes shall be removed promptly for the purpose of accelerating agriculture development of the district.
Director, Horticulture on the occasion emphasized upon the need of making Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) in the district and called for ensuring balanced lending in all key sectors to promote equitable growth and stressed for a self-reliant, productive and sustainable horticulture sector.
Earlier, the DDC and Director, Horticulture released a booklet on Agriculture Credit Linked schemes which were distributed among all the participants containing necessary information regarding all welfare credit schemes.