90pc agriculture loan disbursed in 9 months

All specialized, state-owned and private commercial banks, including foreign commercial banks operating in the country, have already disbursed 90.09 percent agriculture and non-farm rural credit in past nine months from July 2016 to March 2017.

The schedule banks have already disbursed a total of Taka 15,810.42 crore till March while the target is Taka 17,550 crore for the current fiscal 2016-17, BB sources said.

Foreign and private commercial banks have shown better performance than the public banks during the period.

All state-owned and specialized banks have disbursed 80.26 percent loan of their total target while foreign and private commercial banks have disbursed 101.14 percent of their target.

Six state-owned commercial banks - Agrani, Janata, Rupali, Sonali, BASIC and BDBL and two state-owned specialized banks - Bangladesh Krishi Bank and RAKUB have disbursed Taka 7456.09 crore of their target Taka 9290 crore.

But the foreign and private commercial banks have disbursed Taka 8354.33 crore of their target Taka 8260 crore.

"The trends of recent credit disbursement indicate that the disbursement target for the current fiscal is likely to exceed," BB chief spokesperson Subhankar Saha told BSS.

Subhankar Saha said the country has been able to exceed the agriculture
loan disbursement target in the last couple of years due to the BB`s strict monitoring over the firm loan disbursement trend of the schedule banks.

Every month, BB holds a meeting with scheduled banks to expedite
agriculture loan disbursement activities, he added.

BB`s disbursement target was Taka 14,595 crore for 2013-14 fiscal, but the disbursement surpassed the target and stood at Taka 16,037 crore.

Fiscals 2014-`15 and 2015-`16 also followed the similar trend with
disbursement of Taka 15,978 crore and 17,646 crore against the targets of Taka 15,550 crore and Taka 16,400 crore respectively.

According to the BB data, the disbursement of agricultural credit and non-farm rural credit has increased by 11.96 percent during July-March in 2016-`17 compared to that in the corresponding period in 2015-`16.

Source : BSS