Nabard’s Karnataka Regional Office on Wednesday has entered into MoU with State Bank of India (SBI), LHO-Bengaluru, to take up joint intervention projects and provide support, concessional refinance and capacity building of the stakeholders in Nabard’s livelihood projects.

The ongoing development initiatives of Nabard and SBI include — Tribal Development Fund (TDF), Watershed Development Fund (WDF), Farmer Producer Organisation (FPOs), Self -Help Group (SHGs), and Joint Liability Groups (JLGs). The MoU will benefit farmers and 45,000 beneficiaries of 260 FPOs in 28 districts; 8,500 beneficiaries of 70 watersheds in 20 districts and 15 tribal development programmes (wadis) along with JLGs/ SHGs through EShakti (digitisation)/artisans/agri-preneurs/agri-start-ups.

Under Nabard’s EShakti project launched in 29 districts, around 3.02 lakh SHGs have been digitised and 2.81 lakh SHGs are credit-linked as of October 1, 2020. This MoU aims at SBI acting as an implementing agency for digitising their SHGs and on-boarding on Nabard’s EShakti portal across Karnataka.

Credit flow to SHGs

According to Niraj Kumar Verma, CGM, Nabard, “This will facilitate the availability of credit to the SHGs. Further, each branch of SBI in rural and semi-urban areas will strive to finance 50 JLGs and SHGs annually. Nabard will also extend grant support for the promotion of JLGs and SBI would explore the possibility of entering into a separate MoU with Nabard for promotion of JLGs with BC/BF support.”

Nabard is also planning to extend support at the rate of 60 per cent of ₹5,000 to conduct financial literacy programmes in the rural/semi-urban branches and through Financial Literacy Centres (FLCs) of SBI. Aiming at financial inclusion, Nabard would also extend grant support for procuring infrastructure support like VSAT, mobile signal boosters, handheld projectors to SBI.

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