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The inability of banking institutions to provide disaggregated data on farm credit flow is hampering the targeted delivery of institutional credit to small and marginal farmers, a senior agricultural ministry official said on Tuesday.
It is said that farmers of small and marginal holdings, who constitute nearly 85 per cent of the farming community, get only 15 cent of the institutional credit and nearly 60 per cent of their credit needs are met through other sources.
The credit outflow to the agricultural sector has been increasing every year, and this year the government’s disbursement target for agriculture is a whopping ₹11 lakh crore. But the question to which the government needs an answer is where this money is going, said Ashish Kumar Bhutani, Joint Secretary, in the Agriculture Ministry. He was speaking at a seminar organised by FICCI.
One of major worrying factors for the ministry is that big farmers are cornering a larger share of the credit available for agriculture under priority sector lending.
“We have been requesting the banks to give us disaggregated data under appropriate heading so that we know who has accessed the credit. But they have expressed their inability to provide such data,” said Bhutani.
If they are at the forefront of the digital revolution , why are the banks not in a position to give such data, he wondered, adding that this data is crucial to make sure that the credit is made available to the needy.
“The fact that as many as 4.8 crore farmers have registered with a portal that the ministry has created has helped the officials to get most of their details, such as size of landholding, ownership details and land records, since last year. But we are unable to get the financial details from banks,” he said.
This year, the government has earmarked ₹3.85 lakh crore for short-term lending. “We are going to closely monitor to know where this is money going,” the official said.
In the last two years, there has been a lot of focus by the RBI and other agencies on small and marginal farmers. This is a ray of hope. In 2016-17, 50 per cent of the credit flow was allocated to small and marginal farmers, which is a positive sign, he said. “But we need to know where this money is going.”
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