For instance, the government would not have been able to procure more than 10 million tons of  BIS Review 171/2010  3  wheat at higher than its international price without borrowing extensively from the banking system.
Not surprisingly, the credit extended for “commodity operations”, including both wheat and sugar, grew by 288 percent during the last three years compared to 33 percent in the three years before that. Borrowings of this scale would not have been possible without an upward pressure on market interest rates.