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The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) has estimated about two million tonne of storage gap for warehouses in the state.
“It is estimated that the storage requirement in the state is 3.8 million tonne (55 per cent ) of the total seven million tonne (mnt) paddy produced in the state. The existing infrastructure for storage is pegged at around 1.8 mnt, meaning a gap of two mnt,” said S K Kale, chief general manager, Nabard (Odisha) at a press conference.
Kale today announced a new scheme for building warehouses in the state — ‘Nabard Warehousing Scheme-2013’ envisaged at giving direct loans to public and private sector for construction of warehouses, silos, cold storages and cold chain infrastructure.
The gap is significantly high in five districts — Bargarh, Kalahandi, Sambalpur and Subarnapur.
He said, there is plan to conduct a specific study by Nabard for assessing the storage requirements in Odisha after the proposal is received from the state government.
Under the new scheme, Nabard will finance storage infrastructure projects of private companies and private entrepreneurs besides state governments, state undertakings, special purpose vehicles (SPVs) set up on the public private partnership (PPP) mode, co-operatives, federations, state level boards, apex marketing boards/ bodies and panchayats.
In the Union Budget for 2013-14, a corpus of Rs 5,000 crore was created for building storage infrastructure in the country.
The scheme is likely to help the farmers in getting better price realisation and increasing the shelf life of the food grains.
Kale said, the additional concession on lending rates will be given to the eastern states. The storage gap at the national-level is pegged at around 15-16 million tonne.
Meanwhile, Nabard has allocated Rs 1,000 crore to the state government under the 19th tranche of Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF) and will disburse about Rs 1,500 crore for various projects sanctioned earlier.
So far, Nabard has sanctioned RIDF loan amounting to Rs 361.12 crore.
