Bhubaneswar: Even as they failed to meet their last fiscal’s credit target for the agriculture sector, commercial and state corporative banks have again set themselves an ambitious target of Rs 90,395 crore credit during the current financial year in the state.
As per the Annual Credit Plan (ACP) fixed by the State Level Bankers’ Committee (SLBC), the banks including the Odisha State Cooperative Bank (OSCB) will disburse Rs 90,395 crore under various heads, of which Rs 43,282 crore has been set for farm and allied activities. The ACP for this year is Rs 15,000 crore more than the previous year.
The banks have planned to provide farm credit to the tune of Rs 40,227 crore in this fiscal year, of which Rs 29,878 crore has been earmarked for crop loan, Rs 1,004 crore for water resources development, Rs 1,083 crore for fisheries and Rs 2,871 crore for development of farm mechanisations.
Similarly, the banks have targeted to provide Rs 1,603 crore this year for development of agriculture infrastructure, Rs 30,457 crore for MSMEs, Rs 1,152 crore for education, Rs 4,970 crore for housing and Rs 334 crore for social infrastructure development.
During last financial year (2019-20), the SLBC had fixed an annual credit plan of Rs 75,611 crore out of which they were able to disburse Rs 72,100 crore—an achievement of 95 per cent.
However, the credit flow to the agriculture sector worked out to just 69.41 per cent. The bankers had targeted to provide Rs 41,320 crore loan for agriculture and allied activities. But, the achievement was Rs 28,680 crore.
At the SLBC meeting last month, Finance secretary AK Meena had expressed concern over the poor lending to agriculture sector and extremely poor lending to fisheries, dairy and animal husbandry. He has urged banks to clear the pending applications in these sectors first and achieve this year’s target.