The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) has projected that priority farm

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and non-farm sector activities in Andhra Pradesh will require loans to the tune of Rs 70,489 crore in 2011-12.

This was brought out in the State Focus Paper (SFP) prepared by NABARD for Andhra Pradesh, in which credit growth in 2011-12 vis-a-vis the current fiscal was pegged at 16.3 per cent.

The SFP was released today by State Finance Minister A Ramanarayana Reddy at a seminar organised by NABARD.

The SFP projected that crop loans would aggregate to Rs 33,528 crore and agriculture-term loans would amount to Rs 10,531 crore.

In the non-farm sector, NABARD indicated that Rs 7,157 crore worth of loans should be provisioned for. In the case of other priority sectors, the SFP indicated that the credit potential would be Rs 19,633 crore, including Rs 8,920 crore for financing Self-Help Groups in the state under the SHG-Bank linkage programme and community-based sustainable agriculture activities.

In his inaugural address at the seminar, NABARD Executive Director A K Bandyopadhyay indicated that while the state government had undertaken massive investments, especially in irrigation, credit growth for ground-level investment has not picked up in a commensurate manner.

He suggested that bankers enhance lending activities at the farmers' level.

As per the SFP, the estimated credit requirement of SHGs for the year 2011-12 works out to Rs 11,011 crore, including Rs 2,091 crore for Community-Managed Sustainable Agriculture (CMSA) as part of agriculture term-loans.

The SFP was prepared by NABARD to give a broad picture of credit potential in Andhra Pradesh on a district-wise basis.