NCDC disburses Rs 5,630 cr funds till Jan this fiscal

NCDC has disbursed Rs 5,630 crore funds till January this fiscal for various cooperative development programmes, Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh said today.
A statutory body, NCDC has been implementing a central sector/corporation-sponsored scheme for providing financial assistance towards setting-up of agro-based processing units.
While funds in the form of subsidy are provided by the central government, term loans are provided by NCDC under its schemes.
Corporation Sponsored Schemes are exclusively funded by National Cooperative Development Corporation from its own resources.
"In the current year 2015-16, while financial sanctions of Rs 5,698 crore have been made upto January 31, disbursement stood at Rs 5,630 crore, exceeding the target of Rs 5,600 crore for the year," Singh said at the 75th General Council Meeting of NCDC here.

Net non-performing assets (NPA) of the Corporation were maintained at 'Zero' and recovery rate was over 99.2 per cent, he said and hoped that NCDC will continue to achieve even greater heights and higher standards of performance in the years to come.

In the meeting that viewed the activities of NCDC for the 2016-17 fiscal, Singh said, "The Programme of Activities of NCDC for 2016-17 involves a financial outlay of Rs 6,000 crore for promotion of various cooperative development programmes."
Emphasising the need to further strengthen NCDC in order to address the problem of farmers' distress, the Minister urged the Corporation to focus on creating infrastructure, setting up of marketing, storage and transportation facilities.

"Weak community support is the major reason for the farmer's distress, and strong cooperative movement is the only answer to this problem. We have to strengthen NCDC for having strong cooperative sector in the country," Singh said in a statement.
He said greater investment in infrastructure, marketing, storage and transportation has to be made. "It is here that agricultural cooperatives have a very important role to play."
There are six lakh cooperatives covering around 98 per cent of the villages in the country.
The meeting reviewed the progress made by NCDC in the current fiscal and also discussed about activities to be undertaken in the 2016-17 fiscal.