Chandigarh: Coming to the aid of farmers who have borrowed money from private moneylenders in Gurdaspur, Punjab National Bank has now gone in for a debt swap. Instead of paying abnormally high rates of interest to these moneylenders, the bank has taken over their debt at a very nominal rate of interest.
The bank has convinced 124 farmers in the villages of Anial, Bamial, Bakhri, Chak Mir, Jamial, Manwal, Kothe Manwal and Muthi to take a loan from the bank and repay their debt to the moneylenders. This means that these poor farmers will now have to pay an interest of just 9.75 per cent per annum to the bank as compared to 36 per cent interest that they were forced to pay to the moneylenders.
J. K. Kakkar, chief lead manager, Punjab National Bank, Gurdaspur, informed TNS that though the debt swap scheme was announced by the government a few years ago, it did not find many takers. “Earlier, banks expected farmers to get a declaration from the moneylenders that they had given a loan of a certain amount to the farmer. Since the moneylender would not give this declaration, the farmer could not swap the debt. But now we decided to do away with this condition and the farmer now has to give a self-declaration that he has availed himself of a loan from the moneylender. Based on this declaration, we have given a loan of Rs 50,000 each to 124 farmers, who have paid off their dues to the moneylenders,” he explained.
Kakkar said this required the extensive participation of panchayat members in the villages, who helped the bank identify the farmers and also vouch for the latters’ credibility to repay the loan. “We will now be extending the debt swap in the remaining 16 villages of Bamial block in Gurdaspur,” he added.
Now, based on the success of this pilot project, the state-level Bankers Committee at its recent meeting has now asked the lead bank in each district of Punjab to implement this scheme in at least one block. This would go a long way in removing rural indebtedness in the state, which is amongst the highest in the country.