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agricultural credit disbursements on direct basis at
`
33,587 crore for 2001-
02 or
`
39,774 crore for 2002-03 as against the figure of direct disbursements
at
`
18,638 crore and
`
25,256 crore, respectively, as reported earlier from the
RBI’s
Handbook.
This reveals that the official data overestimate the ground-level direct
disbursements of commercial banks by over 80% for 2001-02 or by 58% for
2002-03. In the aggregate including the differences so reported for cooperatives
and RRBs, the ground-level credit flows is placed at
`
62,045 crore for 2001-
02, that is, over 48% higher than that reported earlier (
`
41,828 crore) (see
Chart 14).
There is thus considerable mix-up in the official data on agricultural
lendings as between direct lendings and indirect credit disbursals and
outstandings, as also between crop loans and investment credit. The data
vastly differ as between sources giving rise to considerable misgivings regarding
their quality. Unless these data sets are cleaned up, it is extremely difficult to
provide any accurate assessment of the trends in growth and composition of
agricultural credit-flows and outstandings, those that are directly rendered in
favour of farmers and those rendered indirectly through supply chain agencies.
An Obvious Mix-Up in the SACPs Data
To collaborate the issue raised above, we have attempted a closer
examination of the above data to convince ourselves of the mix-up in SACPs
