Farming
damage
In 2008, when the Government of India announced
a Rs 60,000 crore farm loan waiver, the decision horrified economists and the
financial markets. The waiver, amounting to 1.3% of GDP, would cripple national
finances and damage the credit culture. The moral hazard of penalising prudent
borrowers would be systemic and enduring. However, its proponents argued that
it would free farmers ‘from the suffocating clutches of endemic debt’ and, in
the process, also provide a quick consumption stimulus to the economy.
Subsequent events proved both assumptions awry
and the folly of the decision was absorbed in a hard and painful way.
Nevertheless, a lesson was learnt and federal Governments have since avoided a
repeat. However, it would seem that it is now the turn of state Governments to blunder. In the last few months, Uttar
Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Punjab announced waivers of agricultural
loans in their states to the tune of Rs 80,000 crore. Fortunately, the Union
Finance Minister declared in no uncertain terms that the federal Government would
provide no support to states that choose to go down the debt waiver route.
The 2008 waiver did not reduce farmer
indebtedness
|
Rural HH
|
Agri HH
|
HH in debt
|
Indebtedness
|
|
|
2003
|
147.9
|
89.4
|
43.4
|
48.5%
|
|
2013
|
156.1
|
90.2
|
46.8
|
51.9%
|
|
Source: Indebtedness of Farmer Households, NSS 59th Round,
2003; Situation of Agricultural Households in India, NSS 70th
Round, 2013. Household figures in millions; indebtedness in %.
|
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Farm loan waivers do not work because they fail
to tackle the underlying problem that creates indebtedness in the first place. In
2003, there were 89.4 million ‘farmer households’ (defined as a family with at
least one member that qualifies as a farmer) in India. Of these, 43.4 million,
or 48.6%, were in debt. In 2013, this ratio increased to 51.9% (see table). However,
the problem is not so much the number or proportion of households in debt but
the magnitude of the debt-servicing burden on an individual household. Here the
picture is actually alarming. In 2003, an average farmer household had an outstanding
debt of Rs 12,585. By 2013, this jumped to Rs 47,000, an increase of 14% per
annum. During the same period their income, which determines their
debt-servicing ability, grew by only 11.8% pa from Rs 25,380 pa to Rs 77,112
pa. As a result, the debt-to-income ratio of farmer households surged from 50%
to 61% over the ten-year period. This is despite the massive bailout of 2008,
suggesting that the waiver had no lasting impact on reducing structural indebtedness.
The consumption jab turned out to be a
myth too
The second of benefit of the waiver – that
it would provide a consumption boost – also failed to occur. A study by the
World Bank[1] revealed that there was no positive impact on household consumption
after the bailout. In fact, it went to the extent of disproving all the other benefits that loan waiver proponents
had claimed – that there would be an improvement in productivity as farmer balance
sheets were now deleveraged; that there would be an increase in agricultural
wages and employment; and that the future flow of bank credit would not be negatively
impacted by the moral hazard created by the waiver. The paper argued that no
wage benefits could be attributed to the waiver nor was there a noticeable
increase in new investment or productivity. On the contrary, banks re-allocated
fresh credit away from districts with
a high exposure to the bailout fearing degeneration in their credit culture. Sure
enough, loan repayment in the high-exposure districts fell in the months following
the waiver even in borrower accounts that had previously been in good standing.
Why should it be any different this
time?
Theoretically, you could argue that since
the World Bank study was based on an empirical analysis, its findings would apply
only to the specific environment in which it was undertaken. Future farm loan
waivers may not suffer the same fate – ‘whilst it didn't work in 2008, it could
in 2017’. In actual fact, this premise is irresponsible and glosses over some compelling
counter-arguments.
The most obvious one is that waivers do not
address the fundamental malady behind indebtedness i.e. low productivity; fickle
incomes due to monsoon dependence; un-remunerative prices caused by
unfavourable regulations; and the high incidence of informal lending by loan
sharks. Unless these are addressed, loan waivers will remain futile. As
recently as 2016, farmers across many crop categories saw a net decline in
revenues despite bumper crops from a good monsoon. Higher volumes had the
effect of driving down prices. In some crops there were export restrictions
while imports were free, resulting in an even sharper price collapse. If this
is the state of affairs after two straight years of good rains, things will be near
hopeless should the monsoons fail. Offering a loan waiver might be politically
tempting but the fact is, next year farmers will be right back to where they
started.
|
Year
|
Institutional
|
Non-institutional
|
|
|
% of loan amount
|
2003
|
58%
|
42%
|
|
2013
|
60%
|
40%
|
|
|
% of households
|
2003
|
47%
|
53%
|
|
2013
|
51%
|
49%
|
|
|
Source: Indebtedness of Farmer Households, NSS 59th Round,
2003; Situation of Agricultural Households in India, NSS 70th
Round, 2013.
|
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Secondly, loan waivers by definition apply only to institutional
loans whereas the real stress for indebted farmers stems from loan sharks.
Moneylenders, landlords and other informal sources of credit typically levy
interest rates that are 200-300% higher than the 6-15% rates charged by banks[2]. Moreover, they are known to resort to bullying and harassment to
obtain repayment such as community shaming, intimidation and even physical violence.
According to statistics, 40% of all farmer loans were from non-institutional
sources in 2013, only marginally lower than 42% in 2003 (see table). Farmer
suicides are inevitably concentrated amongst these borrowers and it is important
to recognise that bank loan waivers do not fix this.
What is worse is that small and marginal farmers
are the ones most dependent on non-institutional credit and therefore, the
least benefited by waivers. They borrow 44% of their loans from informal
sources (see chart). Large farmers get 75% of their loans from institutional
sources and corner the majority of the waiver benefit. One could therefore
argue that bailouts naively end up exacerbating the gap between rich and poor
farmers[3].
The consumption impact will actually be
negative
Since farmers have a high marginal
propensity to consume it could be argued that they will spend most of the new
found ‘wealth’, the result of loan write-offs. This logic is flawed on two
counts. Firstly, behavioural economics suggests that households have a very
different reaction to ‘income earned’ versus ‘expenditure avoided’. They may
spend a high proportion of the former but are likely to spend a far lower
proportion of the latter, since it is notional income with a psychologically
different connotation. Some analysts have estimated the propensity to consume
to be as low as 25% for notional income[4], against 80-95% for actual income.
The second flaw in the stimulus argument is
simply that there will actually be no stimulus at all! In fact, there will be a
net negative impact on consumption. To
see why this is so, it is necessary to comprehend the macroeconomic principle
at work. A loan waiver is nothing more than a transfer of liabilities from the
household balance sheet to the Government’s balance sheet, since it is the
latter that now pledges to repay banks. Since the public sector balance sheet
has no ‘stored wealth’ to pay out from, it has only two choices – expand its
fiscal deficit by the waiver amount or reduce expenditure/increase taxes
thereby reducing aggregate consumption. In the case of state Governments, those
that are below the 3% of GDP deficit limit specified under fiscal
responsibility recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission (FFC)[5] can afford to borrow more while the others have no option but to
cut expenditure to make fiscal space. The Economic Survey 2016-17 offers some
calculations for both categories.
If all states were to waive the full extent of outstanding small and
medium farmer loans from the formal sector, the figure could be as high as Rs 2.2-2.7
trillion. Assuming that states below the FFC threshold deficit choose to expand
their balance sheet to accommodate the waiver, they would generate additional
spending of around Rs 63.5 billion pa in the form of debt servicing expenditure.
On the other hand, states that have no fiscal leeway will have to cut back on
expenditure to the tune of Rs 1.9 trillion. Taking into account the increased
consumption by deleveraged farmer households, 25% of the waiver amount or Rs
550 billion, the economy will witness a net
reduction in aggregate consumption to the tune of Rs 1.3 trillion.
Higher borrowing costs and credit
reallocation
Additionally, there are second round
effects of such a strategy – most obviously the fact that private borrowings
will be crowded out if state Governments were to raise an additional Rs 1.9
trillion. The experience with Uday
bonds shows what happens when a large volume of state development loans (SDLs) are
issued in a short span of time. Spreads between SDLs and Government of India
securities widened by almost 30 bps over a few months (see chart). SDL issuances
to finance loan waivers will widen spreads further and raise the cost of
borrowings for states. Unlike Uday
bonds that had the implicit blessing of the federal Government, ‘waiver bonds’ are
unlikely to carry any such assurances. The fiscal implications of high cost borrowings
pose grave risks at a time when state balance sheets are already stretched[6].
Arguably, one positive outcome of a loan
waiver would be an improvement in bank balance sheets to the extent that non
performing farm loans are removed from their books. This may lead to some
increase in fresh lending. However, given past experience, it is more than
likely that such lending would be directed away
from populations that received the bailout since such borrowers now present a
higher credit risk due to the moral hazard phenomenon. Small and medium farmers
will therefore find it harder to access formal sector credit in future and will
be driven further into the clutches of local money-lenders.
Bailouts simply don’t work
In the ultimate analysis, while one could
draw fine lines between assumptions and question the calculations, the
fundamental argument is hard to refute. Loan waivers do not address the real
problem plaguing farmer economics. At best, it has the effect of a painkiller administered
to a patient with a chronic illness – the effectiveness of the analgesic is
temporary and reduces over time while the underlying disease remains untreated,
eventually killing the patient. Waivers impose a heavy growth and fiscal burden
upon the economy and by denying future credit to bailout recipients, hurt the
interests of the very population they were created to serve. If the right mix
of policies to improve farmer profitability are implemented bailouts will not
be necessary; if they are not, bailouts will not be effective. Either way, it
is time policy makers realise that bailouts simply don't work.
[1] Giné, X and M. Kanz, 2014, The Economic Effects of a Borrower Bailout:
Evidence from an Emerging Market, World Bank Policy Research Paper,
WPS7109.
[3] Most bailouts
exclude large farmers although the definition of ‘large’ varies from case to
case. Whatever the terms, the fact remains that farmers with higher reliance on
formal sector credit will always gain more from a loan waiver than those with
higher reliance on informal credit. To that extent, bailouts are regressive
measures.
[5] For states that
satisfy additional criteria relating to revenue deficit, interest
payment-to-revenue ratio and debt-to-GDP ratio, the threshold for fiscal
deficit is 3.5% of GDP.
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