NEW DELHI: Agriculture credit is growing every year and reached Rs 10 lakh crore last fiscal, the government said today while stressing upon the need to increase the flow to small farmers as well as providing loan access to tenant cultivators.The agriculture ministry will soon bring a proposal before the Cabinet for improving lending to small and marginal farmers based on the recommendations of the Sarangi committee "Agriculture credit flow is going up every year. We have achieved the disbursal target of Rs 10 lakh crore in 2017-18 fiscal. The target for the current financial year has been enhanced to Rs 11 lakh crore," said Ashish Kumar Bhutani, joint secretary in Ministry of Agriculture On the sidelines of a conference, organised by industry body Ficci, he said disbursing agriculture credit is not a challenge but the challenge is to give it to right farmers.Bhutani said Rs 6.8 lakh crore was short-term crop loans out of Rs 10 lakh crore credit disbursed last fiscal. "Presently, lessee cultivators are not able to avail crop loans. He also pointed out that farmers are in distress because their margins have squeezed on account of rising input cost and low realisation.

Source: Economic Times April 24, 2018 09:33 UTC