Agriculture Credit Grew 19.5 Per Cent in September. Services Grew 28.3 — and That Is Also Agri Exposure.
On 30 September, credit to agriculture and allied activities stood 19.5 per cent higher than a year earlier, the Reserve Bank reported on 30 October. That is the fastest reading in this series in over a year, and it lands exactly as rabi crop loans start moving. Read alone, it suggests a farm credit boom. Read with the rest of the same release, it says something more useful: the whole balance sheet accelerated in September, agriculture kept pace with industry rather than leading it, and the fastest growth of all ran through a channel that reaches farm borrowers indirectly.
September was a broad acceleration, not an agriculture story
Non-food bank credit grew 19.1 per cent year on year, against 11.2 per cent in the corresponding fortnight of 2025. Industry matched agriculture at 19.5 per cent, against 7.7 per cent a year ago, with infrastructure, basic metals, engineering, chemicals, food processing and textiles all marked buoyant. Personal loans, the slowest large block, still grew 17.3 per cent, against 11.5 per cent. The data come from 41 scheduled commercial banks that account for about 95 per cent of total non-food credit, so this is the system, not a sample of eager lenders.
| Credit growth, year on year | Sep 2025 | Sep 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Agriculture and allied activities | 8.9% | 19.5% |
| Industry | 7.7% | 19.5% |
| Services | 9.9% | 28.3% |
| Personal loans | 11.5% | 17.3% |
| Non-food credit | 11.2% | 19.1% |
Source: RBI sectoral deployment of bank credit, September 2026 (Press Release 2026-2027/1412). Farmioc.
Two months, one direction
September did not spike out of nowhere. In August, bank credit to agriculture had already grown 17.2 per cent year on year, against 7.6 per cent a year earlier. Two consecutive months of acceleration, through the kharif harvest and into rabi sowing, is a trend a credit committee can work with. It is still a stock, not a flow: outstanding credit rises when disbursements rise, and it also rises when limits are renewed higher and term loans for allied activities — dairy, fisheries, storage, food processing — stay on the books. The release does not separate crop loans from that allied and infrastructure tail, and a portfolio manager who treats the 19.5 per cent as crop-loan demand will overstate what is happening at the branch.
The fastest channel reaches farmers indirectly
Services credit grew 28.3 per cent, against 9.9 per cent a year ago, and the Reserve Bank names the drivers: non-banking financial companies, trade, commercial real estate, transport operators and professional services. The first name on that list is the one an agri risk team should underline. Banks lend to NBFCs; NBFCs lend onward, including to agriculture — in August, NBFC credit to agriculture itself grew 17.4 per cent, against 5.1 per cent a year earlier. A growing share of a bank's effective farm exposure therefore sits one step removed from the borrower, inside an NBFC's book, priced and monitored by someone else's field staff. That is not a reason to pull back. It is a reason the exposure should be measured as agriculture exposure, with the underlying districts and crops visible, rather than filed as generic services lending because the immediate counterparty wears a finance-company nameplate.
A definition changed underneath this series
One caution belongs in every committee note that quotes these numbers. The Reserve Bank's own footnote states that, with effect from 31 December 2025, the definition of the last reporting fortnight changed to the last day of the month under the Banking Laws (Amendment) Act 2025. Year-on-year growth rates since then compare end-of-month data for the current year with data collected under the old fortnight definition for the previous year. The acceleration is real — August and September both show it, across every sector — but the base is not measured the way the current figure is. Annualising the September print into a rabi growth target builds a plan on a series whose ruler changed mid-measurement.
What to do with a fast headline
Three practical moves. First, split the book before judging it: crop loans, allied term loans and agri-infrastructure inside that 19.5 per cent will not behave the same way through a weak-monsoon rabi, and the headline will not warn you which part is deteriorating. Second, map the indirect book: NBFC lines that fund farm and rural borrowers belong on the same district exposure map as direct crop lending, because the weather does not distinguish between the two. Third, set rabi volume off the ground, not off the growth rate — weekly sowing pace and reservoir position in your own districts say more about December demand than a national stock figure does. Farmioc's DataStore organises supply, demand, yield and harvest data by crop and district for the financial sector, which is the layer a lender needs when the national number is moving fast and the reasons are local.