The average farm loan disbursement during the 12th five year plan is likely to be around Rs 8 lakh crore a year in the country as compared with Rs 4.75 lakh proposed for the current and last year of the current Five Year Plan.
According to SK Mitra, executive director of the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard), the Planning Commission has estimated the farm credit requirement of Rs 40 lakh crore for the next five year plan to achieve a 4 per cent growth rate in the agriculture sector.
However, these figures were yet to be firmed up, he said while addressing a state credit seminar here on Tuesday.
Nabard has projected a 20.4 per cent growth in credit potential for the priority sector in Andhra Pradesh for 2012-13. Of this, 19.6 per cent growth is expected from agriculture credit , 19.8 per cent from non-farm sector while the other priority sector is expected to provide a growth potential of 22.5 per cent in credit expansion.
The total priority sector consumption would be Rs 85,326 crore next year as compared with Rs 70,849 crore this year.
Complimenting the banks and the AP government for having the growth in agriculture credit more than the targets for the past few years, Mitra said the credit targets for the current year had already crossed 70 per cent in AP as compared with the national average of 58 per cent as on October, 2011. According to him, about Rs 2.61 lakh crore farm credit was disbursed across the country in the first six months of the current financial year.
Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy, however, was not enthused by the indicated rise in farm credit during the next Five Year Plan. "Farm credit in our state grew from Rs 14,000 crore in 2004-05 to Rs 48,000 crore in 2011-12 registering a growth of 242 per cent in the last 6-7 years. Going by this trend, the Planning Commission has to rework its numbers upwards of Rs 40 lakh crore for the next Five Year Plan," he said.
More From This Section
As AP accounts for 10 per cent of the total farm credit in the country, the preliminary estimates by the Planning Commission in the farm credit area suggest that the annual farm credit in the next five years would be about Rs 80,000 crore a year if the state continues to maintain its national share.
Rural labourers will be out of jobs after farm mechanisation: CM
The chief minister warned that rural labourers would not be able to find work beyond the 100-day work offered under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee programme, which has been made 200 days in AP, as the farm sector was poised for a massive mechanisation. “Unless MGNREGA is integrated with the farm sector rural labourers would be completely thrown out of the agriculture economy with the massive mechanisation currently under way,” he said.
He also pointed out that the crop insurance scheme in its current form had become obsolete and needed to be reworked. “A farmer gets Rs 200 per hectare under the present insurance scheme if the crops are damaged whereas the state government is offering Rs 6,000 per hectare to farmers towards input subsidy in the event of crop loss,” Reddy said.
He suggested Nabard should coordinate with the Centre and the insurance companies to ensure that the coverage should at least provide a compensation equal to the investment made by the farmer.