The committee expressed its deep satisfaction that on the basis of actual results of the first six months, it is most likely that banks will exceed the target as they have already disbursed Rs 49.1 billion in the first six months against the year-end target of Rs 85 billion, recording an increase of almost 50 percent over the corresponding period last year.
The committee was gratified that domestic private banks had already exceeded their annual target while big five commercial banks had achieved 63 percent of the target.
Together, commercial banks have increased their share to 58 percent of the total agriculture credit disbursements.
In 1999-2000, commercial banks were providing only Rs 9 billion or 23 percent of the total disbursements to the agriculture sector.
The performance of commercial banks in recovery was also quite impressive, as they had already realised 83 percent of recoverable amounts from agriculture borrowers.
Subsistence farmers (owning land less than 12.5 acres) received almost 65 percent of the total agriculture loans followed by economic-holding farmers (between 12.5 and 50 acres), whose share was 20 percent.
The committee also has begun tracking credit to livestock sector separately from the crop sector. The disbursements for livestock, poultry and dairy have reached Rs 4.5 billion or 9 percent of total loans.
Among users of credit, fertiliser purchase accounted for 42 percent of all loans in the six-month period. Banks also financed 10,318 tractors during this period.