UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Thursday asked the banks to provide credit to farming community at low interest rates so that they could be insulated from being exploited by money lenders.
“One of the most important objectives of the campaign will be to enable small and marginal farmers to obtain credit at lower rates from banks and other financial institutions so that they could be insulated from exploitation by moneylenders,” Mrs Gandhi said at the launch of financial inclusion campaign, Swabhimaan.
The financial inclusion programme seeks to provide banking services to 73,000 villages with population of over 2,000 and open at least five crore new accounts by March 2012 under the campaign.
Mrs Gandhi said that it is a revolutionary campaign to provide whole spectrum of financial services to all persons so that benefits of economic growth reaches to everyone at all levels. She said that major benefits of this programme would be to small and marginal farmers as well as rural artisans who will have easy access to credit at lower rates.