6  BIS central bankers’ speeches  (vi)  Faster growth of indirect credit to agriculture5  Since the second half of the 1990s, indirect credit to agriculture grew faster than direct credit taking the share of indirect credit in total agricultural credit supplied by commercial banks from about 11 per cent in 1995 to 29 per cent by 2011.
During the second half of the 2000s, indirect credit even exceeded its prescribed sublimit under the priority sector guidelines by a narrow margin.6 The rising importance of indirect credit can be interpreted as a reflection of the growing credit needs for strengthening the supply chain infrastructure and the consequent widening of the definition of indirect credit [Chart 5].