Farmer company denied Rs 2.75 crore loan over Rs 3.69 overpayment

Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar

In a bizarre turn of events, a farmer producer company from Sillod was denied a loan of Rs 2.75 crore due to an overpayment of just Rs 3.69 by one of its directors. The shocking revelation came to light during a Reserve Bank of India (RBI) meeting held in the city on Thursday, where the company’s directors shared their ordeal.

Aakash Agro Farmer Producer Company, along with two other farmer groups, had planned to establish an export facility centre in Sillod. The facility, aimed at processing 400 tons of vegetables and fruits daily for export, was designed to run on solar energy to minimize operational costs. To fund the solar project, estimated at Rs 3.70 crore, they sought financial assistance from the State Bank of India (SBI).

However, their loan application hit an unexpected roadblock. During the verification process, SBI assessed the CIBIL scores of the directors and found that one of them had a score of just 450, marking him as a defaulter. This resulted in the outright rejection of the loan application.

Determined to uncover the reason behind the low CIBIL score, Aakash Gaur, a director of the farmer company, conducted his own investigation. What he discovered was astonishing—none of the directors had defaulted on any loans. Instead, the individual in question had mistakenly overpaid Rs 3.69 while repaying a personal loan, which led to an error in the credit records.

Despite repeated appeals to the bank, officials refused to reconsider their decision, stating that they could not approve the loan unless the director’s CIBIL score improved.

“Our farmer producer company applied for a loan of Rs 2.75 crore from SBI to set up an export facility centre. The bank rejected the application, citing the low CIBIL score of one of our directors. However, the reason for the low score was an overpayment of just Rs 3.69, which wrongly marked him as a defaulter. While banks must assess CIBIL scores, they should also take real situations into account,” said Aakash Gaur, director of Aakash Agro Farmer Producer Company.