While ensuring all farmers have access to institutional credit ,The government is likely to announce in the upcoming interim Budget about major increase in the agricultural credit target to Rs 22-25 lakh crore for the upcoming fiscal year , according to sources.
For the current fiscal year , The government’s agri-credit target is Rs 20 lakh crore , providing short term agri-loans of upto Rs.3 lakh at interest subvention of two per cent.This means farmers are getting a farm loan of up to Rs 3 lakh at a reasonable rate of 7 per cent per annum.Farmers can also claim long term loans but interest rates are as per the Market rates.
For the last 10 years, credit disbursal for agriculture and related activities has been exceeding the target.For the current year around 82% of 20 lakh crore,valued at 16.37 lakh crore has been disbursed by both private and public banks in the said period,as per the official data.
During the 2022-23 fiscal, the total farm credit disbursal was at Rs 21.55 lakh crore, surpassing the target of Rs 18.50 lakh crore kept for the same period.”The agri-credit disbursal is likely to exceed the target this fiscal as well,” the sources said.
7.34 crore of farmers have already availed loan through Kisan Credit Card(KCC).Looking at the NSS Report, the sources said there is still a large segment of agricultural households who do not have an access to the institutional credit. The government is targeting to bring such people under the formal credit network as well.
Currently,More attention is being given to agri-credit and the government is deploying several awareness campaigns to identify any left out eligible farmers and bring them in the credit network. To give a more focused approach,agriculture ministry has also created a separate division on ‘credit’ , as per the sources.
There are already 3 campaigns running to achieve the target of 100% for the last 3 months under the name of ‘Ghar Ghar KCC campaign’, ‘Viksit Bharat Sankalp Yatra’ and ‘PM-JANMAN’,which focuses mainly on vulnerable tribal groups.Trying to bring in left out farmers to avail the loan through KCC.
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