The credit outlay proposed for agriculture and allied activities in the district during the next financial year (2015-2016) has been increased by 18.24 per cent to Rs. 5,127 crore and to the micro and small-scale sector it is expected to go up by almost 20 per cent to Rs. 5,028 crore.
District Collector Archana Patnaik released the annual credit plan for the district here on Tuesday. According to the plan, the district has potential in horticulture crops such as cut flowers, agri bio-tech projects, green houses, etc. There is also potential for development of allied infrastructure such as cold storage, rural godowns and, wasteland development, minor irrigation projects, and food processing. The focus will be on creation of assets (investment and development loans).
The outlay for the sector for the current year (2014-2015) is Rs. 4,336 crore. The lending has been mostly to crop loan, including coconut, sugarcane, banana and also jewel loan for farming activities.
In the case of micro and small-scale sector, the outlay has been increased by 20.63 per cent to Rs. 5,028 crore as against Rs. 4,168 crore this year.
The Central Government is focusing on this sector now. The credit plan for agriculture and allied activities and micro and small-scale sectors is slightly more than that proposed in the potential-linked credit plan.
Since 2001-2002 to 2013-2014, total annual lending had been higher than that proposed in the annual credit plan in the district.
For the next fiscal, the total credit outlay proposed is Rs. 12,150 crore, which is over 1,900 crore more than that for the current financial year (Rs. 10,226 crore).
Between April and December 2014, the banks in the district had lent Rs. 7,980 crore.
The district will achieve the proposed credit outlay by the end of this month, says the district lead bank manager K. Krishnamoorthi.
Other priority sectors provide the required backward and forward linkages to the agriculture and micro-industries and hence, the outlay for this will be up by 15.85 per cent next year at Rs. 1,995 crore.
Releasing the document, the District Collector said that the district has the highest annual credit plan in the State and it is also leading in implementation of several schemes of the Government.
S. Suresh Kumar, General Manager of Canara Bank – Coimbatore Circle, and V. Saravanan, assistant general manager of Reserve Bank of India (Chennai), received copies of the plan from the Collector.
