Loan waiver budget won’t exceed Rs 24,000 crore

Recalling the 2008-09 loan waiver during the Congress-NCP regime, he said, “In the absence of the mechanism to ascertain eligible beneficiaries, almost one-third of the total amount went to non-eligible candidates.” Referring to the current loan waiver exercise, the officer said the estimate of Rs 34,200 crore was provided to the government based on the number of total beneficiaries (89 lakh) initially given the SLBC. After scrutiny, the number came down to 67 lakh.

Officials in both information technology and cooperation and marketing ministries said their estimates in terms of budget and loan waiver numbers appeared to have gone wrong, as they “entirely believed the information provided by the banks in July”.

“Secondly, since the digital process was new, there were some teething problems, which required corrective measures, which resulted in revised deadline for completing the process,” said an official. According to the officials, most eligible farmers would get the benefit by the end of December. In cases of complexities or errors, they said, things would be resolved by early January 2018.

“From the very beginning, we had no problems with the budget. In monsoon session of state legislature held in month of June-July, we had made provisions for Rs 22,000 crore. And we have set aside Rs 5,000 to 6,000 crore more if required,” said an official in the finance ministry. The senior officer, who is also part of the loan waiver exercise, added: “Maharashtra is the first state to adopt a digital process for the loan waiver. Since it was a new model, we may have faced some problems and also learnt on the job. But it has helped to check corruption, and also ensured eligible farmer got the benefit. The process helped to check manipulations.”