Productivity growth assessment of primary agricultural credit societies in West Bengal

The importance of primary agricultural credit societies (PACS) in the cooperative structure of the country is known to all. The present study makes an analysis of total factor productivity growth of PACS working under their respective District Cooperative banks (DCBs) in thirteen districts during 2010–2017. The productivity growth assessment is made with the help of efficiency change due to technical and technological reason and Malmquist index. With regard to the first measure, only four districts show that there is positive impact of efficiency change. However, the impact is minimal in most of the cases except Burdwan. With regard to the effect of technological change, it is observed that except for Dakshin Dinajpur and Jalpaiguri, the effect is positive. In fact, the districts that show a higher positive effect of technological progress include Burdwan (6.4%), Raiganj (2.7%) and Howrah (2.2%). The result of Malmquist index shows that ten districts show a progress with Burdwan dominating with a growth of 34.5%. For the remaining others, the growth is not significantly high.