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disparities in ground-level credit flows in favour of agricultural and allied
activities.
First, inmany of these statistics, ground-level credit data include indirect
lendings of commercial banks both in the aggregate data series (Annexure P)
as well as in the data set on individual agencies (Annexure R and S). Data
on commercial banks, which had been specially provided by the RBI for this
research project, are based on control returns prescribed by the central bank
for public sector banks (Annexure S) and private sector banks [Annexure S(i)]
under the
special agricultural credit plans
which began in 1995-96 (as cited
earlier; these data on disbursements of agricultural credit do cover indirect
advances including RIDF deposits of banks). RIDF deposits are obviously lump
sum transfers to the fund by individual banks and cannot be distributed across
states; only NABARD disbursements for infrastructure projects done under
RIDF can be covered state-wise, but the statements do not appear to cover
them. As they primarily concern scheduled commercial banks, a commentary
on inter-state and inter-regional disparities in the distribution of projects under
RIDF has been presented in Section IV above. Also, in preparing the state-wise
and region-wise distribution of ground-level credit data, RIDF funds and other
bonds are thus excluded from the aggregate credit flow.
Second, in the time series in Annexure P, the data cover public
sector banks along with RRBs and cooperatives and do not include data
for private sector banks until 2005-06; therefore, the state-wise and region-
wise distribution is exclusive of private commercial banks until 2005-06. In
Annexure S(i), however, a separate state-wise and region-wise distribution of
credit by the private sector banks is presented. Incidentally, private sector
banks’ disbursements for agriculture constitute about 10 to 13% of the total
ground-level disbursements, presented in Annexure P.
Finally, a major problem with the co-operative sector data is that the
ground-level disbursements are apparently worked out taking into account
the available data for state-level and district-level cooperative banks (SCBs
and DCBs) along with the data for land development banks (SCARDBs and
PCRDBs). In reality, the ground-level disbursements for agriculture by the
cooperative system are pre-dominantly done at the level of primary agricultural
credit societies (PACs), though the bulk of their funds are provided through
refinance by SCBs/DCBs. However, we have no way of knowing how these data
for the ground-level disbursements for cooperative sector are arrived at. In
Exhibit A, we present some concrete data on all tiers of the cooperative sector
only as examples of standalone data that are available for different tiers.
