In a written reply in Rajya Sabha, Union Home and Cooperation Minister Amit Shah informed that 95,035 Rupay Kisan Credit Cards have been distributed under pilot projects in Panchmahal and Banaskantha districts of Gujarat by respective District Central Cooperative Banks.
“The Panchmahal DCCB and Banaskantha DCCB distributed 66,234 and 28,801 Rupay Kisan Credit Credits to farmers respectively. The RuPay Kisan Credit Card is provided to farmers who have an account under the Kisan Credit Card Scheme to provide credit support to the agricultural and allied sector”, he added.
Shah reply further added, “The Kisan Credit Card Scheme was implemented to provide need based, timely credit support to farmers for their cultivation needs as well as for non-farming activities, in a cost-effective manner. Under the scheme, dairy/fishery farmers are also provided credit support as per the laid down guidelines. The card can be used for ATM, POS and E Com transactions”, he said.
“Through Rupay-Kisan Credit Card, the farmers are now able to get credit support at a reasonably low rate of interest (effectively 4%) and they can also use the Card to meet other financial and incidental consumption requirements. Further, for dairy farmers no collateral is required for credit limit up to Rs. 1.6 lakh”, his reply added.
Shah said, increased use of Rupay KCC in both the districts through Micro ATMs with Bank Mitra dairy cooperatives has also increased flow of funds through the cooperative banks ensuring cooperation amongst cooperatives.
During the pilot phase, flow of funds in the rural cooperative banking sector in both the districts has increased many-fold in just a few months in terms of the amount and number of transactions through Rupay Kisan Credit Cards.
Under this project, Bank Accounts of all the members of the cooperative societies are being opened in the concerned District Central Cooperative Banks and Rupay-Kisan Credit Cards (KCCs) are being distributed to the account holders.