Question : AGRICULTURAL CREDIT

MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF FINANCE (SHRI PAWAN KUMAR BANSAL)

a) : Details of agricultural loans disbursed by 27 Public Sector Commercial Banks during 2003-04, 2004-05 and 2005-06 arc as under :

Year	Disbursement (in Rs. crore)
2003-04	42210.77
2004-05	65217.72
2005-06	94277.79

(b) & (c) : The Associated Chamber of Commerce and Industry conducted, a study covering 21 states of the country and suggested that following measures could be undertaken to enhance credit flow to agriculture :

# Scaling up the efforts to enhance coverage of institutional credit

# Commercial banks :o make an effort to bring into their fold, on average, at least 100 new farmers at each rural and semi-rural branch during the current year.

# Each rural and semi-rural branch of commercial banks, on an average, to take up at least two to three new investment projects.

# In every district, on an average, all commercial banks put together to finance 10 agro-clinics during the current year.

The Government has already taken a number of steps to enhance credit flow to agriculture. On 18th June 2004, the Government announced a package to double the flow of agriculture credit within three years, which has been achieved in two years itself. The credit flow to agriculture during 2005-06 is Rs. 1,80,486 crore as against Rs.86,931 crore during 2003-04. A total of around 64.78 lakh, new farmers have been financed by the Public and Piivate Sector Commercial Banks and RRBs (upto February, 2007).