Karnataka Bank targets Rs 6,800 crore farm credit

Mangaluru: The city-based private sector Karnataka Bank is targeting Rs 6,800 crore of agriculture credit during the current financial year 2017-18.

This would constitute 18.09 percent of adjusted net bank credit as against the minimum regulatory requirement of 18 percent, bank managing director and CEO M S Mahabaleshwara said in a release here.

The bank had achieved its agriculture advance target of 18 percent and was confident of maintaining the lead in future, he said addressing an agriculture business conference of the bank held here yesterday, the release said.

The farmers needed a hand of support in times of crisis and agricultural lending professionals, being technical officers should extend all the necessary backing towards their requirements, he said.

Agriculture business managers should focus on timely extension of farm credit, technical counselling, marketing input to farmers to help them reap maximum benefit and ensure timely renewal so as to have a commercially viable agriculture portfolio which was remunerative to both the bank as well as the farmers, he added.

He also advised the branches to focus on the potential areas including warehouse receipt finance, harvesting and transportation loans, finance for farm mechanization, agriculture gold loan portfolio besides crop loans, development loans and loans for agro processing units.

In his address, the bank's general manager Muralidhar Krishna Rao said the agriculture field officers and branch heads should achieve the agriculture credit targets on monthly basis.