Farm loan waivers 'a resounding success'

New Delhi: Finance Minister P. Chidambaram yesterday said the government's loan waiver scheme for farmers has met with "remarkable and unprecedented success" giving relief to 40 million families in the country.

"Many critics had doubts about the success of the scheme but we have successfully completed the most ambitious programme of the government," Chidambaram said after inaugurating 101 online branches of the public sector State Bank of India (SBI) in the national capital.

"Not a single complaint was received from the 17,479 branches of public sector banks across the country about implementation of the loan waiver scheme," he said.

"Imagine not a single crime is reported from 1,000 police stations and then we can take pride in the law and order situation," he said.

Chidambaram had announced on June 16 in Bangalore that state-run banks would waive off farm loans by June 30, as outlined in his budget speech of February 29. "The banks will implement the farm loan waiver scheme by this month-end. The process is on," he had said. "The scheme is under implementation by the public sector, regional rural and cooperative banks. The beneficiaries have been identified."

In his budget speech, he had set a June 30 deadline for writing off bank loans to small and marginal farmers with land holdings of up to three hectares.

In May, the size of the scheme was increased to Rs716.8 billion (Dh61 .1 billion) from the Rs600 billion that had been earmarked initially. The waiver will enable beneficiaries to get fresh loans for the kharif sowing season.

Chidambaram had recently reminded heads of state-run banks to complete the loan waiver process to facilitate fresh loan applications from farmers.