Addressing the 57th general council meeting of NCDC here, Singh said though the corporation had already slashed its interest rates twice in past few months, further reduction would provide it a competitive edge over other financial institutions.
NCDC has recently been notified as a public financial institution for funding development projects in the cooperative sector. The NCDC Act has also been amended to expand the scope of development-oriented activities of this apex cooperative sector body.
The minister is the president of the NCDC general council. The corporation had sanctioned Rs 614 crore in 2002-03 to several cooperative enterprises. Of this, Rs 515.19 crore had been disbursed during the year. This had lifted the total developmental assistance disbursed by NCDC so far to over Rs 7097 crore.
Nearly 46 per cent of NCDC funds had gone to agro-processing projects in the cooperative sector. The cooperatives were engaged in fisheries, poultry and handlooms. These received about 13 per cent share of the total funds disbursed by NCDC.
Singh said the NCDC proposal for launching a new central sector scheme for women cooperatives during the 10th Plan had been cleared by the expenditure finance committee and was likely to get final approval soon. This scheme, involving a substantial subsidy component, would facilitate empowerment of women, he said.
NCDC managing director Dinesh Rai said at the meeting that the corporation had initiated steps to extend operations in the newly-constituted states of Uttaranchal, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. For this, it had opened three new regional directorates at Dehradun, Raipur and Ranchi.
Rai said the corporation would like to enter new areas, such as education, healthcare, transportation, tourism, hospitality, media, communication and information technology. It wanted a role in implementation the agricultural insurance policy, including the newly conceived agricultural income insurance programme.
