Bengal Government Offers Loans for Buying Surplus Potato Stocks

The West Bengal government is making special arrangements to enable farmers to sell surplus potatoes harvested this year to the government and cold storage owners to store it. Government officials and those of the State Level Bankers’ Committee (SLBC) recently held a meeting in this regard, indiatimes.com writes.

The government would help cold storage owners to open accounts in cooperative banks through which the latter would be able to take loans at easy rates, to finance the cost of storing the potato.

Those farmers wanting to sell their produce to the government would have to get themselves enlisted at the local BDO office, from where the details would be sent to the cold storages.

Earlier, it had been announced that starting March 1, the state government would be buying the surplus production from farmers at the rate of Rs 5.5 per kilogram. The process would continue until March 17 in the districts of south Bengal and until March 24 in north Bengal.