by Suman Gupta
In a sombre ceremony held at Bank of Baroda, New Delhi, Bank of Baroda ,a premier and leading Nationalized Bank and Small Farmers Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC) have entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) under which the Bank would play an active role in providing collateral free loans to Famers Producer Companies (FPCs) for which credit guarantee cover upto 85 % of the loan amount maximum upto one crore will be made available by SFAC.
Bank of Baroda is the second largest PSU Bank which is known for innovative banking practices and spearheading the cause of social banking.
Small Farmers Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC) is an Autonomous Society promoted by Ministry of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers’ Welfare, Government of India which is pioneering inclusive growth of small and marginal farmers in agribusiness activities. The Society has also been entrusted with the task of implementation of the critically important National Agriculture Market Scheme on e-platform to progressively free agricultural trade and offer price discovery to farmers.
Shri G B Panda, Head – Govt Relationships, Bank of Baroda while welcoming the gathering, highlighted the importance of reaching out to the grass root level and enlightened that signing of this MOU is a way forward to help India to built a robust agriculture economy. Shri G.B.Bhuyan, Head- Rural & Agri Banking and CSR presided over the function and exchanged MOU with Smt. Sapna Nigam,Director,SFAC. He accentuated that the bank is strongly committed to promote agro based lending in order to achieve the goal of doubling the farmers’ income as envisioned by the Hon’ble Prime Minister. Smt. Sapna Nigam, Director (VCA), also highlighted the importance of reaching out to the farmers and thanked Bank of Baroda having taken this initiative to develop overall agri business.
Shri R.K.Gupta, Zonal Head of the Bank underscored that the relationship of Bank with SFAC will immensely benefit the farmers in increasing their farm income and assured that the bank will take all steps to translate the agreement to business numbers in agri business domain.
