Nabard disburses Rs 1,638 cr to TN, Puducherry

The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) has announced that the total amount disbursed to Tamil Nadu and Puducherry for agricultural and rural development has touched Rs 1,638.34 crore for 2006-07.

The total amount utilised for short-term production in 2006-07 was Rs 476.9 crore, Rs 153.69 crore for weavers, Rs 522.35 crore for investment credit, Rs 466.4 crore for the Rural Infrastructural Development Fund (RIDF), Rs 5.21 crore for co-financing and Rs 6.33 crore for watershed development programmes in Tamil Nadu, while in Puducherry, Rs 2.4 crore was utilised for short-term production and Rs 5.06 crore for investment credit.

During 2006-07, the bank had launched two innovative pilot projects "" SHG (self-help group)-Post Office linkage programme and Nabard-GTZ Grameen Tatkal Scheme.

Nabard signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the postal department for linking SHGs with post offices in Sivaganga, Pudukottai, Tiruvannamalai, Thanjavur and Tiruvarur districts.

Under the MoU, Nabard will provide Rs 34 lakh to the postal department by way of revolving fund assistance for retail lending. In turn, the post offices would sanction loans to SHGs at 9 per cent interest rate per annum, where the SHGs are required to repay the amount in 24 monthly installments.

The postal department will retain 3 per cent as service fee while the rest will be passed onto Nabard. In the case of default by the SHGs, Nabard will bear the entire risk. The bank has released Rs 11.04 lakh to 46 SHGs in Sivagangai and Pudukottai districts under this project till date.

Adopting a family-centric approach in lending, Nabard joined hands with Germany-based GTZ, an international co-operation enterprise for sustainable development, and launched Grameen Tatkal scheme to address the credit needs of all the members of a family, taking into account their economic and consumption activities.

The scheme is being implemented in Sivagangai district through Pandya Grama Bank while Co-operative Central Bank (CCB) is implementing the same in Salem.

The scheme will be in existence till December 2008. The Pandyan Grama Bank has disbursed Rs 1.86 crore to 333 families while Salem CCB has disbursed Rs 84 lakh to 325 families in the two districts.

"The finance minister, in his Budget speech, had set a target of Rs 2,25,000 crore as farm credit and had also mentioned about bringing 50 lakh additional farmers under the banking ambit.

Considering Tamil Nadu's population and geographical area, our target for 2007-08 would be around 10 per cent of the country's target and we will take all efforts to achieve that," K V Raghavulu, chief general manager, Nabard, said.