The Hindu Business Line : Banks cast the net for agri officers

The hiring is being done as a fall out of the Finance Minister's directive to increase the focus on rural areas and double agricultural credit within 3 years.

State Bank of India has said it would recruit 500 officers. Mr A.K. Purwar, Chairman, SBI, said that his bank had set up an agro-business unit which would focus on both backward linkages - linking farmers with suppliers of inputs - seeds, fertilisers, and also forward linkages - covering processors who buy products.

The recruitment of agri-officers would be to put this plan into action.

Bank of Baroda has advertised for 165 agricultural officers recently while Bank of India said it required a similar number. The Bank of India's Chairman and Managing Director, Mr M. Venugopalan, said, "We are thinking of recruiting around 150 officers. The rural economy has started getting better and there is scope even for housing and car loans there. I have been telling branch managers to look into these areas".

It isn't as though banks don't have this cadre even now. But as Mr V. Leeladhar, Union Bank of India, CMD, said, "We have about 400 agricultural officers. But what has happened over a period of time is that, some of these officers have become executives and moved to the general cadre. They have become branch managers, DGMs, GMs. Though we have people who are capable of doing this, they were not in particular slots. What we are now doing is to bring them back to this particular area."

Some banks are known to be visiting agricultural colleges to pick up their graduates on a contract basis. Some are examining proposals to engage agricultural graduates on an experimental basis for a short term of 3 to 6 months. The regular process of appointment may take a while and the banks don't want to lose time since the kharif crop season is already on. These agricultural graduates will be asked to do marketing work, interact with farmers, promote usage of good seeds, pesticide, and other inputs and also promote awareness of the bank's products.

Not everyone is on a hiring spree, however.

Union Bank of India will be among the few which may not require any fresh recruitments.

According to Mr Leeladhar, who has a different point of view on the issue of recruitment, "We have been doing agri loans for three decades now. For a crop loan, I don't necessarily require an agricultural graduate. The scale of finance is known - if you have five acres, this is what you get. It is only when we have a high tech project, say floriculture, aquaculture etc. - that we require agricultural specialisation. Our people should be able to do this without further infusion of agri-officers."

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