Performance assessment of primary agricultural credit societies in West Bengal: An efficiency approach

Abstract

The cooperative movement in India has started long time back. With regard to the support to the agricultural sector in the country, though NABARD has been playing a pioneering role, a key role is also played by the State Cooperative Banks, District Cooperative Banks and Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS). The present paper looks into the performance of PACS which is the last tier in the cooperative framework of the country for the period 2012–13 to 2016–17. Since data is not available for individual PACS, the study is based on the overall performance of agricultural societies in thirteen districts of North and South Bengal. The focus of the study is efficiency analysis of the PACS of the sample districts. The findings are based on a single input, two output models under the assumption of variable returns to scale. The overall analysis shows the dominance of the performance of the PACS from the districts of South Bengal over those from North Bengal. The findings are interesting and also point to the scope of improvement for the different district level PACS.