Pune June 30 Out of Pune’s annual credit plan of Rs 5,063.80 crore for 2008-09, 70 per cent or Rs 3,560.78 crore goes to agriculture that comes under the priority sector of the plan. The credit plan has 22 banks — 17 PSUs, four private and two coops — participating this year. With most banks putting up the list of beneficiaries for the loan waiver as announced by the Central Government on Monday, the credit plan has allocated Rs 1,743.86 crore for fresh loans for the agriculture sector in the district. Announcing the plan to the media, district collector Chandrakant Dalvi said the annual credit plan for Pune district is up 18 per cent from Rs 4,301.62 crore last year. “This is the highest in the country,” he said. The plan will also see allocation of Rs 60 crore for the 40,000 self-help groups in the district. The collector is keen to have Pune participate in the Nirmal Gram Yojana scheme with the help of self-help groups and the zilla parishad. “The members will be trained to construct toilet blocks. Nearly four lakh families under the SHG will be covered under this scheme and the group will be called Nirmal Bachat Gat,” he said. The ambitious integrated farm development model that will cover 1,850 villages has been allocated Rs 100 crore, the same as last year. The project aims at seeing one farmer in each of these villages getting loans in the Rs 5-10 lakh range. The farmers will also be trained in a farming model that will integrate sugarcane farming, horticulture, drip irrigation methods, cereals, vegetables, dairy, fishery or even sericulture as per the soil structure. “We will soon conduct a meeting to assess this model,” Dalvi said. For the non-agriculture sector and small-scale industries, Rs 176.26 crore has been allocated. Under the various schemes of the Central Government, the credit plan has allocated Rs 196.85 crore for the National Horticulture Board, Rs 853.05 for Kisan Credit Society and Rs 220.36 crore for small scale industries.
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