The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) has set apart an amount of Rs 2,000 crore during the current financial year for creation of warehousing infrastructure in different States.
Incidentally, loans disbursed to State Governments by Nabard have crossed the Rs 1-lakh crore mark as on September 30.
The warehouse fund is being made available under the Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF) tranche XVII, a spokesperson for the regional office here of Nabard said.
NEW CHANNEL
This has opened a new channel of funding from Nabard, the spokesperson said here.
This would support streamlining of storage of food grains at the production, distribution and consumption levels, not only for State Governments, but also for Government-owned/supported entities and private sector entities which supplement storage requirements for agricultural and allied sector products.
To ensure smooth and timely implementation of the projects, Nabard has put in place a system of monitoring selected projects to guide and help the implementing agencies of State Governments.
PROACTIVE ROLE
Evaluation studies on RIDF projects conducted by both in-house and reputed outside institutions such as the IIM have observed that Nabard has played a very proactive role in financing and management of infrastructure projects in rural areas.
Studies have also suggested that RIDF support to States gives a fillip to public investment in infrastructure in rural areas, positively impacting the otherwise declining rate of capital formation in infrastructure for agriculture development.
NEW PRODUCT
Acknowledging the need for investing massive financial resources in further developing the infrastructure in rural areas, Nabard has now designed a new financial product viz., Nabard Infrastructure Development Assistance (NIDA) for this sector outside RIDF as well.
Meanwhile, disbursements cumulatively stood at Rs 1,02,844 crore as on September 30, the spokesperson said.
These loans are presently available at 6.5 per cent interest to State Governments for creating infrastructure conducive not only to boost demand for agricultural credit but also to enhance the productivity of credit.
RIDF ORIGINS
RIDF was set up in 1995-96 with an initial corpus of Rs 2,000 crore. The funds were sourced by the Reserve Bank of India from scheduled commercial banks in proportion to the extent of their shortfall in agriculture lending.
Nabard has cumulatively sanctioned 3,609 projects in the State of Kerala with an outlay of Rs 4,257 crore and a loan assistance of Rs 3,427 crore under RIDF tranche I to XVI (1995-96 to 2010-11), of which Rs 2,334 crore has been disbursed as September 30.
Among the sanctioned projects, the Chamravattom regulator-cum-bridge project is the biggest, involving a final outlay of Rs 106 crore and a RIDF loan of Rs 95.12 crore.
STORAGE CAPACITY
The project is expected to have a storage capacity sufficient enough for irrigating an ayacut area of 4,344 hectares.
The intrusion of saline water will be restricted by the regulator-cum-bridge. The completion of the project would also reduce the distance between Kozhikode and Kochi by 40 Km and provide assured drinking water in the project area through increase in ground water recharge/lift irrigation schemes.
Nabard has sanctioned Rs 528 crore for projects facilitating water supply with total project outlay of Rs 772 crore in the State. It has also provided loan assistance for setting up of IT parks in Ernakulam, Kollam and Alappuzha.