Govt. extends loan waiver scheme to individual farmers

Govt. extends loan waiver scheme to individual farmers

News:

1. The Maharashtra government has decided to waive outstanding loans of individual eligible farmers.

Important facts:

2. Recently, the State government issued a Government Resolution (GR) on loan waivers to eligible farmers.

3. Prior to changing its definition of an eligible farmer, the government had considered a farmer family as a single unit and up to ₹1.50 lakh of agricultural debt was waived.

4. Now, each individual with an outstanding agricultural loan will be covered in the scheme, and up to ₹1.5 lakh will be waived by the government.

5. Each individual’s loan amount up to ₹1.50 lakh will be waived.

6. The necessary instructions have been given to banks to prepare the list of potential beneficiaries.

7. Earlier, under the scheme, if a farmer had an outstanding loan amount of more than ₹1.5 lakh, the difference will have to be paid to the bank before he or she can avail of the State government waiver.

8. The revised rule also states that farmers who have paid some money to the bank as per the earlier version of the scheme will be reimbursed if the cumulative outstanding loan amount is less than ₹1.5 lakh

9. In March this year, the government said it has paid for bad farm loans worth ₹13,500 crore to banks, which benefited 35.32 lakh farmers.

10. The government plans to cover at least 77 lakh farmers under the scheme.