India's ground-level credit (GLC) to agriculture surged to Rs 32.50 lakh crore in FY 2025-26, a more than four-fold jump over 11 years. The Agricultural Credit Target for FY 2025-26 was set at Rs 25 lakh crore by the Union Budget, which has been significantly exceeded. NABARD plays a central supervisory and refinancing role in channelling this credit through cooperative banks, RRBs, and commercial banks to farmers across India.

Agricultural credit in India operates through a multi-layered institutional framework: commercial banks (including SBI and private banks), Regional Rural Banks (RRBs), and cooperative credit institutions — all supervised and partially refinanced by NABARD. The ground-level credit figure represents actual disbursements reaching farmers, not sanctioned limits, making it the most meaningful metric of financial inclusion in agriculture.

The four-fold jump from roughly Rs 8 lakh crore (around FY 2014-15) to Rs 32.50 lakh crore in FY 2025-26 reflects several policy levers: successive upward revisions in annual credit targets, interest subvention schemes (currently 1.5% for prompt repayment under KCC), doubling of Kisan Credit Card (KCC) outreach, and the formalisation of agricultural lending post-JAM trinity.

For NABARD Grade A, this figure is critical because NABARD's refinance operations, its Annual Report data, and its supervision of RRBs and cooperatives are all anchored to GLC numbers. Examiners frequently ask whether targets were met, what institutional share commercial banks vs cooperatives hold, and how KCC saturation links to GLC growth.

The achievement also signals stress points: despite volume growth, small and marginal farmers still face high informal borrowing, and NPA levels in agricultural credit remain elevated. NABARD's development role — through FPO financing, RIDF, and climate finance — becomes the policy response to these structural gaps.