Hyderabad, July 30: The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) has offered a special package to cooperative banks to bail out the farmers in distress.

Nabard chairman Ranjana Kumar told reporters here that an amount of Rs 2,500 crore at 5 per cent interest rate had been provided to cooperative banks.

She added that the union finance ministry had provided a subvention of 1.25 per cent over the bank’s refinancing rates for cooperative banks to undertake this measure for the benefit of the farmers.

“The measure was a part of rescheduling of farm loans for five years, including two years of moratorium,” she said.

The banks have been directed to pass on the benefit to the farmers, she added.

As part of the measures to improve flow of credit to agriculture, Nabard has also directed cooperative banks to fix ‘scale of finance’ in a realistic manner.

“We have found that there has been rigidity in fixing scale of finance for different crop loans. We have asked state cooperative banks and district central cooperative banks to treat it as a range for giving loans but not as a tool to reject them,” Kumar said.