This paper is intended to study the institutional credit flow to agriculture at national and state level i.e. Andhra Pradesh and focused at primary data collected at Visakhapatnam district to address the coverage of farmers and distribution of credit amount between different sizes of farmers such as large, medium, small and marginal farmers. There are three major institutional sources Commercial banks, Co-operative banks and Regional rural banks to supply credit to agriculture. All the institutional sources have increased the significant amount but the data reveals credit delivery to agriculture is inadequate particularly for small and marginal farmers. The credit disbursement of Visakhapatnam district shows that the proportionate loan amount issued to small and marginal farmers is not sufficient for their credit needs to cultivate land. Findings of this paper revealed that marginal and small farmers were not covered by formal agricultural credit system proportionate to their share in total number of farmers and that they did not get credit in tune with the area they operated. Hence present study is a focus on this aspect that why banks are reluctant in disbursing credit required by the small and marginal farmers.
Institutional credit, farmers, Visakhapatnam district
