All crop loans should be routed through Kisan Credit Cards to ensure farmers don’t use loans for non-agricultural purposes | The Indian Express

All crop loans should be routed through Kisan Credit Cards to ensure farmers don’t use loans for non-agricultural purposes | The Indian Express

Written by Ashok Gulati, Ritika Juneja |Updated: November 25, 2019 9:59:34 am

The writer is chair professor for agriculture at ICRIER. Views are personal

Ritika Juneja is Research Assistant at ICRIER.

All crop loans should be routed through Kisan Credit Cards to ensure farmers don’t use loans for non-agricultural purposes

Streamlining the agri-credit system to facilitate higher crop loans to farmer-producer organisations against commodity stocks can be a win-win model to spur agriculture growth.

A bolder step would be to empower farmers by giving them direct income support on per hectare basis — rather than hugely subsidising credit. (File)

Normally, a sector’s credit off-take is a sign of its health. Higher the off-take, the better the sector’s performance. There has been a healthy off-take of ground-level credit (GLC) in agriculture and allied sectors. In the financial year (FY) 2018-19, banks disbursed Rs 12.55 trillion as GLC to agriculture, surpassing the government’s target of Rs 11 trillion.