Farm credit offtake expected to surpass ₹27 lakh cr

New Delhi: Farm credit is expected to surpass ₹27 lakh crore this fiscal year, driven by double-digit growth in the sector, said Shaji KV, Chairman, National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard).

Lenders, including regional rural banks (RRBs) and rural cooperative banks (RCBs), have already disbursed ₹14 lakh crore of credit to the farm sector until September of this fiscal year.

The Nabard chairman was also positive about rural consumption and said that growth rates in rural areas are likely to outpace urban demand.


He said there's a need to move people from production agriculture to processing agriculture. "We need to move people up the value chain," he added.

To make villages poverty-free, farmers and rural productivity need improvement and this can be achieved by providing adequate credit, electricity, and irrigation facilities, he said.

When asked how agriculture's contribution to GDP, which has been hovering around 12-14%, can be improved, Shaji KV said: "We need to focus on improving total agricultural production and per capita growth in the sector."

He also said that the formalisation of rural credit is taking place and people in rural areas are accessing affordable credit, which itself is creating demand in the rural areas.

Further, Nabard's target for investing in rural infrastructure this fiscal year is almost Rs 1 lakh crore, including the Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF).

He also said that Nabard is actively working on digitising the cooperative societies with the target of computerising 67,000 societies by the end of this financial year.