Nabard has estimated a credit potential of ₹2.21-lakh crore for West Bengal for 2021-22 under the priority sectors. This is almost 16 per cent higher than the estimated credit potential of ₹1.91-lakh crore for FY-21.

Of the total credit, the share of agriculture sector including agri infrastructure and ancillary activities is around 40 per cent, MSME is 44 per cent, SHG-JLG around eight per cent, housing sector five per cent, education loans two per cent, social infrastructure – one per cent and the remaining one per cent would be export credit and renewable energy, said a press statement issued by Nabard.

Crop loan constitutes around 65 per cent of the total agriculture credit and 26 per cent of the total priority sector credit potential. Allied agriculture constitute around 22 per cent while agri infrastructure and agri ancillary constitute around seven per cent each of agriculture credit. The share of agriculture term loan to total farm credit is 25 per cent.

State Focus Paper

The State Focus Paper 2021-22 highlighting the credit potential was launched at a State Credit Seminar on Thursday.

Nabard prepares Potential Linked Credit Plan (PLP) annually, for each district through a consultative process for facilitating realistic credit planning and credit dispensation for priority sector activities. The PLPs map the potential available for priority sector lending taking into consideration the resource endowments, scope of activities, infrastructure and the constraining factors. The sector-specific potentials assessed through the district plans are aggregated at the State-level in the form of “State Focus Paper”.

Apart from the sectoral credit potentials, the Paper also highlights the critical infrastructure gaps, other linkage support and key policy issues requiring appropriate interventions from various stakeholders for the holistic development of agricultural and rural economy of the State.

The theme for this year’s State Focus Paper (2021-22) is ‘Collectivization of Agricultural Produce for Enhancing Farmer’s Income’. In view of the predominantly small land holdings in the country, Nabard has been espousing this cause for leveraging the collective strength of the producers to achieve higher income through better bargaining power and higher price realisation.

“The small holder farmers, representing 96 per cent of the total farming community in West Bengal, are faced with challenges of low investment, poor productivity, low value addition, weak market orientation and low margins. In this scenario, collectivisation of agricultural produce by organising small farmers into Farmers’ Producer Organisations (FPOs) is imperative to leverage the economies of scale by conferring greater bargaining power, better market and price discovery, access to credit and insurance etc,” the release said.

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