BJP-Arrival Pains

Back to Square One A correspondent writes:
THREE reports on banking within a week are quite an event. One common element among the reports is that every one of them it critical of priority sector lending. One difference is that the R V Gupta Committee, which was entrusted with the job of examining agricultural credit specifically, deals only with one segment of priority sector lending. But Gupta has no sympathy for agricultural lending either He wants to scrap the 18 per cent target for agricultural lending and suggests that instead the Reserve Bank should announce absolute annual targets for each individual bank, taking into account the flow of agricultural credit in the previous year The argument advanced is that under the present system the agricultural sector has not kept pace with the availability of lendable bank resources for agriculture. "As a result the 18 per cent limit is not relevant any more". the committee has concluded.