Bangladesh Bank has raised the farm credit disbursement target by around 7 percent to over 155.50 billion taka (about 2 billion U.S. dollars) for the current fiscal year 2014-15 (July 2014-June 2015) to support sharecroppers to augment domestic food production.
Bangladesh Bank (BB) Governor Atiur Rahman made the announcement at a press briefing here in Dhaka Monday and discussed farm-credit distribution guidelines.
Credit disbursement to agriculture sector exceeded the annual target for 2013-14 fiscal with a growth of about 10 percent over the previous fiscal year.
BB raised the farm credit target by 3.3 percent to 145 billion taka (about 1.87 billion dollars) for the last 2013-14 fiscal year.
The central bank of Bangladesh in September 2008 made mandatory for all local and foreign commercial banks to disburse agriculture credit to ensure the country’s food security.
BB had also asked the private banks that don’t have branches in rural areas to disburse the farm loan through state-owned banks or registered NGOs.