1
Summary & Recommendations
Revised Kisan Credit Card Scheme
1.
Government of India introduced the Kisan Credit Card scheme (KCC) scheme in
1998 as an innovative credit delivery mechanism to enable the farmers to meet
their production credit requirements in a timely and hassle-free manner. The
KCC guidelines have gone through several changes since then. The guidelines
revised in 2012 has incorporated many new features over & above the financing
of crop production requirement, viz., consumption expenditure, maintenance of
farm assets, term loan for agriculture & allied activities, coverage of KCC holders
under PAIS and recently the coverage of KCC holders under Atal Pension Yojna,
etc.
2.
Govt of India suggested NABARD to conduct a study on the implementation of the
revised KCC with a view to understand
(i) Is the revised Kisan Credit Card Scheme serving its intended purpose?
(ii) Reasons for gap between number of agricultural households and number of
operative KCCs
(iii) Government had advised banks to convert all existing KCCs into ATM/
RuPay cards. Whether action plan in this regard has been chalked out at
branch level? Also, whether all new KCCs are issued in the form of RuPay/
ATM debit cards?
(iv) Efficacy of debit cards issued under KCC Scheme with regards to their
inter-operability and issues related thereto? Whether farmers are using
these cards for payment to different vendors? Back-end issues with NPCI/
other platforms?
(v) Overall impact of revised KCC scheme?
3.
Keeping in view the requirement of the study, two districts from each of the
six states falling in different geographical regions of the country namely, Assam
(NE Region), Bihar (East Region), U. P. (Central Region), Punjab (North Region),
Maharashtra (Western Region) and Karnataka (southern Region) were selected
for the study. A total of 71 branches of 32 banks covering all the three agencies
i.e., Commercial Bank, RRB and DCCB were selected for the study. Finally, a
total of 980 farmers covering 714 KCC holders and 255 other non-KCC farmers
were selected for the study.
Kisan Credit Cards issued
4.
The cumulative number of KCC cards issued since inception (1988-89) till
March 2015 had reached to 14.64 crore. However, this number of KCC accounts
(14.64 crore) cannot be considered as coverage of number of farmers under KCC
scheme, as many farmers have got reissued/ renewed their KCC several times.
