Page 608 - ES 2020-21_Volume-1-2 [28-01-21]

Agriculture & Food Management 235

Agricultural Credit

7.7 Given the large proportion of resource constrained small and marginal farmers in India,
timely availability of adequate credit is fundamental for the success of farming activities.
The agricultural credit flow target for the year 2019-20 was fixed at ` 13,50,000 crores and
against this target the achievement was ` 13,92,469.81 crores. The agriculture credit flow
target for 2020-21 was fixed at ` 15,00,000 crores and till 30 November, 2020 a sum of
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` 9,73,517.80 crores was disbursed. The Agriculture Infrastructure Fund announced as a part of
Atma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan will further boost credit flow to the agriculture sector (Box 2).
The regional distribution of the agricultural credit has, however, been skewed in favour of the
Southern Region. The share of north-eastern states has been very low (Map 1).

Map 1: Regional Distribution of Agricultural Credit in India in 2020-21.

Source: Based on data received from DAC&FW

7.8 During the year 2020-21, in the total disbursement as on 30 November, 2020, the share
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of southern region in agricultural credit was more than 40 per cent while it was less than 2 per
cent for the north-eastern region (NER). This low coverage of the agricultural credit in NER is
because the total cultivable area in North Eastern States is only about 2.74 per cent of the total
GCA of the country. Moreover, community ownership of land is prevalent in most of the NE
States. These two factors affected the intake of Kisan Credit Card (KCC) loans in NER as these
loans are given against land documents. The credit disbursement in the agriculture sector is in
fact positively related to gross cropped area as shown in Figure 6.