The flow of agricultural credit by cooperative banks has increased substantially during the last four years, said Pawan Kumar Bansal, minister of state for finance yesterday.

Bansal also said that to strengthen the rural cooperative credit institutions, the government of India was implementing a revival package for short-term cooperative credit. He said that the states willing to implement the package were required to sign a memorandum of uderstanding with the central government and NABARD for carrying out certain legal and institutional reforms.

He disclosed that 18 states and one union territory had so far conveyed its consent to implement the package. The revival package included a financial outlay estimated at Rs13,596 crore to be shared by central government, state governments and the short-term cooperative credit structure in the ratio of 68:28:4 respectively for the country as a whole.

The central government has already released Rs1,425 crore for implementation of the package to NABARD, said Bansal. He also provided the following disbursal figures in response to a query by a member of Parliament: