The Union Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley stressed the need for long term investment in agriculture for meeting the food related demands of the country in the future. Shri Jaitley asked the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) to continue to address the inadequacies in rural finance market and thereby enhance its unique Apex development bank status for development of agriculture and rural sector. Emphasising the need to support rural housing, the Finance Minister noted NABARD's efforts in allocating Rs.3000 crore by way of refinance and also underlined for enhanced efforts in this regard. The Finance Minister Shri Jaitley was addressing the Board of Directors of NABARD here today. Shri Jaitley also interacted with the Directors about the priorities of his Government and the expectations from the Apex Development bank. He advised NABARD to continue to provide leadership in areas such as financial inclusion, farm credit to the small and marginal farmers besides those farmers [tenants/lessees etc] who do not have clear title deeds to the farms they till. He noted that NABARD had effectively utilised the initial corpus of Rs.5000 crore of Long Term Rural Credit Fund allocated in the current year's Union budget.
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