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In contrast to the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) estimate that there is a storage gap of about 6.3 million metric tonne for warehouses by 2014-15, state government has said it has sufficient storage capacity as of now.
The Nabard has also expected about 10 million tonne of additional modern storage which is likely to be created by funding from Nabard Warehousing Scheme (NWS) announced in 2013-14 Union Budget.
"We do not need any additional storage facility, we require hardly 3.8 million tonne of foodgrains for food security and have nearly 12 million tonne storage capacity," Ashok Kumar Barnwal, secretary Food and Civil supplies said. Under National Warehousing Scheme, Nabard can directly fund for infrastructure.
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This would be the first such scheme other than RIDF (Rural Infrastructure Development Funds) under which Nabard can directly fund the warehouses. "We are awaiting guidelines in this regard and we will start direct funding for warehousing and cold-storages," Rajendra Singh, chief general Nabard, regional office Bhopal said.
The scheme titled "NABARD Warehousing Scheme" 2013-14 (NWS), was created with a corpus of Rs 5,000 crore.
