After having expressed his anguish behind closed doors on the inertia in government and that adequate attention was not being paid to agriculture issues in Delhi on Friday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today asked the banking sector to ‘‘seriously reflect’’ on the problem of agricultural credit to farmers and asked them to ‘‘come up with innovative solutions.’’The PM, who is scheduled to visit Vidarbha which has seen spurt in farmers’ suicides, said credit to agriculture was a “cause for considerable concern” because despite the flamboyant growth seen in this sector (credit), which would double in three years, there were still ‘‘vast uncovered gaps.’’ Many classes of farmers were still “completely outside the institutional credit delivery systems,” he said.Speaking at the valedictory function of the centenary celebrations of Canara Bank in Bangalore this evening, the Prime Minister asked the banks to “reach out to every nook and corner of the country” and “provide credit solutions to farmers’ needs.’’The destitute and people with no income or means of repayment need support before they can make good use of loans and the government’s role is to enable the poor to avail financial services, the Prime Minister said. Micro-finance can emerge as a powerful tool to fight poverty but it has to part of the country’s mainstream financial system to be effective, he said. ‘‘I suggest that the Finance Minister constitute a group with representatives from the Reserve Bank, NABARD and major commercial banks to formulate policies that will promote ‘financial inclusion’ by stimulating financial services for the poor,’’ he said.
