Vol. 11, Issue 12 (2022)

This study was based on cross sectional data collected from randomly selected 120 respondents from Delta region of Tamil Nadu. Out of which, 72 borrowers were non-defaulters and 48 borrowers were defaulters. In order to estimate the credit requirement, 7 criteria were adopted. At overall level, the per hectare credit requirement of Paddy as per first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh criteria was Rs.80,869, Rs.60,651, Rs.86,732, Rs.88,467, Rs.88,424, Rs.88,914, Rs.90,693, respectively. The credit gap estimated by using first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh criteria was Rs.4,631 (5.72 per cent), Rs.24,849 (40.9 per cent), Rs.-1,232 (-1.4 per cent), Rs.-2,967 (-3.3 per cent), Rs.-2,924 (-3.3 per cent), Rs.-3,414 (-3.8 per cent), Rs.-5,193 (-5.7 per cent), respectively. Thus, from the estimated credit gap, it was found that the first two criteria favours financial institutions and the rest of the criteria were in the favour of farmers.