RBI may reschedule only Rs 4000 crore loan

Hyderabad: The Reserve Bank of India is likely to reschedule crop loans of around Rs 4,000 crore in Andhra Pradesh. Earlier, the RBI had said that the AP government will reschedule about Rs 10,500 crore crop loans. However, after the latest developments, the RBI is likely to reduce the amount to only Rs 4,000 crore, according to AP finance department officials.

Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu spoke to RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan and requested him to reschedule the crop loans at the earliest.  RBI executive director Deepali Panth Joshi wrote a letter to the AP government and asked for a report justifying that at least some mandals were affected by cyclone and drought. The AP government sent a report to RBI that 572 mandals were affected by cyclone, heavy rains and drought and requested them to reschedule the crop loans.

In response, RBI sent a letter to the state government stating that Rs 10,500 crore crop loans could be rescheduled. Later, everything changed and the RBI sought various details about the farmer’s bank accounts, amount of loan taken by the each farmer and mandal wise crop yield. The RBI sent a letter to the AP government and said there was no justification as stated by the government that 572 mandals were affected by cyclone and drought as the Directorate of Statistics and Economics reported that the state has recorded good crops.

Meanwhile, AP government officials said that if one goes by the attitude of the RBI and its latest letter, the number of mandals affected by cyclone and drought will be reduced and the crop loans rescheduled only for those mandals. They said that the rescheduled amount will be around Rs 4,000 crore. The AP government official team is likely to go to Mumbai to discuss with RBI ED about rescheduling crop loans. A senior officer said, “RBI is not going to reschedule crop loans as sought by AP. It will be waste of time to request RBI repeatedly. The state can easily mobilise that amount on its own.”