A Comparative Study on the Performance of Various Types of Loans Availed by the Farmers in Thiruvananthapuram District

Agriculture is facing a scenario of shifting from subsistence farming to commercial farming. Commercial farming is more capital intensive than the subsistence farming leading to the increased credit requirement for the farmers. The main objective of the study was to investigate the performance of various kinds of credit, adequacy of credit under Kisan Credit Card scheme (KCC), cost involved in availing the credit by the KCC beneficiaries and credit requirement of the respondents. The average amount per farmer sanctioned in SBI under KCC was ` 69,333.33 and in case of Co-operative bank it was found to be ` 52,000. In case of beneficiaries the total amount sanctioned under various loans was found to be ` 9,67,946.93, out of which 74.11 per cent was accounted by housing loans followed by 12.53 per cent under crop loan/KCC loan. Comparing Cost A2 with the scale of finance, credit was found to be adequate for all the crops grown by respondents. While comparing compare Cost C with scale of finance, credit was found to be inadequate in tapioca only with a gap of 2.88 per cent