Agriculture in Tamil Nadu continues to face the challenge of shrinking acreage, over-exploitation of groundwater, diversion of agriculture land to non-agricultural uses and disparities in yield rates of crops, according to the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development.
Nabard, in its annual exercise of assessing the credit flow potential to the priority sector, has pointed out in the document for 2018-19 that these factors have contributed to a steep fall in the contribution of agriculture to GSDP. In 2011-12, it was 14 per cent and it has dropped to 5 per cent (at current prices) in 2016-17.
Credit projections
Inadequate availability of water for agriculture is a major cause for farmers’ distress in the State, according to Nabard. The Potential Linked Credit outlay for priority sector in 2018-19 is pegged at ₹2,06,683 crore, an 8 per cent increase over that of the previous year. Projections for crop loan is estimated at ₹82,287 crore.
Estimates of sectorwise credit projections are: farm credit ₹1,13,929 crore; agriculture infrastructure ₹7,610 crore; Ancillary activities ₹7,507 crore; MSME ₹38,696 crore; Export credit ₹5,715 crore; Education ₹7,417 crore; Housing Loan ₹11,524 crore; renewable sources of energy and waste management ₹2,145 crore; others ₹10,107 crore; and social infrastructure with bank credit ₹2,029 crore.
In 2016-17 the ground level credit flow was ₹1,52,405 crore which was 7 per cent higher than that in the previous year.