Rs. 1300 million ADB funds credited to farmers’ accounts returned

By Ifham Nizam

The Department of Agrarian Development yesterday said Rs. 1,300 million credited to the farmers’ accounts had returned due to errors in account numbers.

Agrarian Development Commissioner General H.M.L.A. Abeyratne told the Agriculture Minister, and senior officials, at a discussion, that steps would be taken to credit all the money to the farmers’ accounts by the ends of next week.

With the help of the Asian Development Bank, the Department of Agrarian Development distributed Rs. 08 billion to 1.2 million farming families at the rate of Rs. 10,000 per hectare.

Before crediting the money to the farmers’ accounts, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Department of Agrarian Development informed the farmers to check whether their account numbers, given to the Agrarian Service Centres were correct, but some farmers did not do so.

As a result, Rs. 1300 million of the money credited to the farmers’ accounts returned to the Department of Agrarian Development. Out of the Rs. 8 billion, provided by the Asian Development Bank, to provide relief to the farmer families, Rs. 6.5 billion was credited to the farmers’ accounts.

Agriculture Minister Mahinda Amaraweera said that if the Ministry of Agriculture had asked the farmers to give the correct account numbers, or checked whether the account numbers were correct, the money would not have returned.