Sharma, M.L.Bungla, Manjari2019-09-142019-09-142019-07http://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/handle/1/5810127865Agriculture credit is an important prerequisite for agricultural growth. In India agriculture is more than an occupationand credit is one of the key drivers of progress in this sector. Flow of credit to agriculture plays a critical role in agricultural production in the country. In case of agriculture, it is not only the availability of credit but also the access to adequate institutional credit that matters, since most of the agricultural land belong to small and marginal farmer categories. Findings revealed that the overall flow of credit has increased over the years in Uttarakhand but it has been found that performance of credit institutions was inconsistent and a continuous fall of credit achievement against target was observed. The proposed study was conducted in Haldwani, the most populous block of Nainital district of Uttarakhand, covers the maximum number of agricultural borrowers and maximum number of branches of credit institutions. Increasing availability of agricultural credit resulted many problems i.e. diversion of credit other than production purpose, which directly or indirectly have a bearing on the repayment of the loan and overdues levels. Therefore, the present study has been conducted with reference to supply of credit to agriculture. The study based on the data collected from sample borrowers for the year 2018-2019, in order to examine the socio economic status of the borrowers and extent of diversion of credit. Time series data from period 2009-2010 to 2018-2019, was collected to examine the performance of institutional credit supply to agriculture. For this CAGR analysis was employed. In order to examine repayment behaviour of borrowers, logistic regression was applied, to examine the factors influencing the overdues to screen potential defaulter, discriminant function analysis was employed. Multistage sampling technique was used to identify the agriculture borrowers.From block, a total number of 15 borrowers were selected randomly from each village and altogether 90 borrowers were selected from 6 villages. Total numbers of non-defaulter and defaulter borrowers identified were 71 and 19, respectively.The results of the study indicated that RRBs had stagnated number of branches over the years. Therefore, it is suggested that RRBs should expand their branches so that it would cover larger area in study area.Commercial banks have highest share (more than 80 %) of credit supply to the total credit supply over the years and maximum share (90%) during year 2014-15. Co-operative banks and RRBs have lower share of institutional credit as compared to commercial banks in Uttarakhand. Positive growth rate was recorded in co-operative banks (16.60% per annum), RRBs (17.3%) and commercial banks (14.9%) per annum in terms of achievement. Co-operative banks contributed lower percentage of achievement in the disbursement of agricultural loan as compared to commercial banks. Therefore, efforts should be made to increase the achievement in advancing agricultural loan by co-operative banks.In overdues, commercial banks shared the highest overdues than that of other institutions.Recovery performance of RRBs was recorded very poor as compared to cooperatives and commercial banks. For the better recovery of loan, proper supervision and follow up action by bank officials should be needed. Timely availability of loan plays an important role in agriculture for better production and better repayment of loan was reported better on overall basis in the study area. Further, it wasobserved that factors like lower age group,family size, income and land holding of the borrowers contributed positively to loan repayment behaviour of borrowers.Credit institutions are suggested that they should keep strict watch when advancing loans to these groups of borrowers. Therefore, credit institutions are advised to advance optimum loans to the borrowers to minimize the incidence of overdues.ennullThesis