187
indicated by the Finance Minister and distributed amongst banks in proportion
to their shortfall in agricultural credit target under priority sector is not fully
called up by the NABARD for subscription to the Fund. Because of the evolving
nature of its operations, it is difficult to discern this gap tranche-wise. Second,
the entire default in credit target does not form part of the Corpus; the bank
are not called upon to use it for any agricultural purposes. There is some
excess left with the banks as part of their lendable resources unattached to any
social objective.
There is no public knowledge of the above excess of credit target defaults
and the Corpus indicated by the Finance Minister. This calls for an accurate
compilation of data which is possible only at the RBI level. No such information
has been put out in official publications except for a few years – an information
which Professor Radhakrishna’s
Expert Group on Agricultural Indebtedness
(July 2007) obtained specially from the RBI and published in its report. We
reproduce this data set in Table 6.3 below.
As shown in the above table for three years 2003-04 to 2005-06, the
amounts of default in achieving the agricultural credit target were
`
24,586
crore,
`
31,759 crore and
`
36,628 crore, respectively. Against these amounts,
the Corpus proposed by the Union Finance Minister and the amounts allocated
to banks by the RBI (both of which are the same) were for the succeeding
Table 6.3: Measured Gap Between Default and RIDF Allocation for all Domestic
Scheduled Commercial Banks
(Amount in
`
crore)
Year
Number
of banks
defaulting
in respect of
achievement
of agricultural
lending target
Amount of
agricultural
credit
defaulted
Amount allocated to banks for RIDF
under respective tranches as per corpus
announced by the Government
Difference
between
Amount
defaulted and
allocations
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
1995-96 to 2002-03 Not available
2003-04
45
`
24,585.65
`
8,000 crore for RIDF-X (for 2004-05)
`
16,586 crore
2004-05
43
`
31,759.11
`
8,000 crore for RIDF-XI (for 2005-06)
`
23,759 crore
2005-06
44
`
36,627.81
`
14,000** crore for RIDF-XII (for 2006-07)
`
22,628 crore
2006-07 and onwards not available
Note:
* Not yet allocated. **
`
4,000 crores under the separate window for rural roads component of Bharat
Nirman Programme under RIDF-XII for 2006-07 and RIDF XIII for 2007-08.This table was provided by RBI
in a special communication to the
Expert Group on Agricultural Indebtedness.
Source:
Report of the
Expert Group on Agricultural Indebtedness
(Chairman: Prof. R. Radhakrishna)
July 2007)
