Bank Keshavarzi Iran, the state-owned lender to the agriculture sector, plans to lend 520 trillion rials ($4.6 billion) to agriculture projects by next March, the bank CEO said.
Speaking to the press on the occasion marking the annual Government Week (Aug. 23-29), Rouhollah Khodarahmi said the lender has paid 118 trillion rials ($1 billion) since the beginning of the current fiscal year (March 20).
Khodarahmi pointed to government plans to allocate $1.5 billion for rural development projects, saying 44.8 trillion rials of this amount has already been paid.
“The loans helped fund 48,000 small enterprises in rural areas,” IRNA quoted him as saying.
“Each loan can create at least two jobs,” he said, adding that rural businesses on average can borrow 1.2 billion rials.
The senior banker pointed to the 81% increase in deposits held with the bank in one year. The lender had 506 trillion rials ($4.3 billion) in deposits last year (2018-19) and the amount rose to 920 trillion rials ($7.8 billion) this year with seven more months before the calendar year ends.
Diverse Rates
Recalling the mandate of the bank to grant cheap loans to farmers, Khodarahmi said it charges different interest rates on loans subject to the nature of projects.
It charged 4% on loans procured from the banks’ own resources, 6% on rural employment loans, 9% on loans for creating small jobs like building green houses, developing medicinal plant farms etc., 15% on loans for supplying electricity to farms and 18% on loans to fund working capital for farming-related business.
Regarding performance of the bank in alleviating losses of farmers hit by the floods in March and April, Khodarahmi said the bank will offer nine trillion rials to the flood-stricken farmers in cheap loans at 4%.
Unprecedented rains that began in late March caused flooding across the country, mainly in the northern and southwestern regions.
The heavy downpours led to losses to the tune of 300 trillion rials ($2.5 billion), mainly to homes, farmlands, roads, bridges and power and water infrastructure mostly in the remote and deprived regions.
