UP agri sector in for major credit flow during FY12

The agriculture and allied sectors in Uttar Pradesh are in for a major boost during the period 2011-12 with the total credit potential in the farm and non-farm segments pegged at Rs 65,440 crore for the next financial year. This would be a jump of more than 20 per cent over state credit target estimated for the current financial year at Rs 54,000 crore. Uttar Pradesh has been persistently grappling with low credit flow to agriculture, which has restricted unlocking of true potential of the sector. Releasing the Potential Linked Credit Plan (PLP) for the state pertaining to the year 2011-12, National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) executive director P L Behra said the commercial banks had been advised to encourage rural sector credit flow. Of the PLP of Rs 65,440 crore,Rs 33,134 crore pertained to crop loan, forming over 50 per cent of the total credit estimate. PLP comprises crop loan, agriculture term loan, non-farm sector and other priority sector loans. Agriculture sector loans alone comprised Rs 44,995 crore of PLP, which is 69 per cent of the consolidated credit projection. Over the last couple of years, Uttar Pradesh has beaten the national average in agriculture growth rate. During 2005-06, the agri sector growth rate of India and Uttar Pradesh stood at 5.9 per cent and 1.9 per cent respectively, as caompared to the corresponding statistics of 0.2 per cent and 4 per cent during 2009-10. However, the state agri credit flow has been dismal compared to the national average. During the last financial year, the credit flow recorded a growth of 7.9 per cent in the state compared to 21.5 per cent across India. In this context, the state had urged Nabard to increase the rural sector credit, since Uttar Pradesh targets to double its farm income in the next three years. In fact, Nabard had hiked crop loan projections byRs 4,000 crore on the state government’s request for additional credit outlay. According to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) mandate, annual PLP is prepared by Nabard for the respective states through a consultative process to estimate credit potential in various sectors of the economy. Later, the commercial banks prepared the Annual Credit Plan (ACP) for the state based on PLP, which fixes the individual bank targets under the Lead Bank Scheme.