Nabard readies Rs 17,803 cr credit plan for K'taka

The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) has prepared a Rs 17,803 crore exploitable potential credit plan for Karnataka during the financial year 2006-07.

Of this, Rs 8,401 crore is being set aside for crop loans, Rs 2,483 crore for investment credit in agriculture and allied activities, Rs 6,919 crore for non-farm sector and other priority sector activities.

Speaking at the state credit seminar 2006-07 here on Friday, B B Mohanty, chief general manager of Nabard, said in Karnataka, Nabard has so far provided refinance to the extent of Rs 5,729 crore which mainly contributed to capital formation in agriculture.

Besides, around Rs 1,300 crore have been provided towards production credit to the co-operative banks and regional rural banks annually. It also provided liquidity support to banks for rescheduling loans.

To make the national thrust programmes popular, massive awareness campaigns and capacity building efforts have been undertaken in Kisan Credit Card (KCC), Swarojgar Credit Card (SCC) campaign, Cluster Development, he added.

During the last 10 years, an assistance of Rs 2,531 crore has been sanctioned to the Karnataka government for 13,795 projects from Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF) for improving road connectivity, irrigation potential and social programmes like school building, anganwadi buildings.

It has also taken multi-pronged interventions in marketing, technology transfer, women's empowerment, entrepreneurship development and training to ensure the micro-enterprise development in Karnataka.

The bank has so far sanctioned around 462 Rural Entrepreneurship Development Programmes (REDPs) with a grant assistance of Rs 3.20 crore besides Rs 2.24 crore for Rudsetis towards their recurring expenses.

Nabard has been playing the prime role in micro-credit in the state and till December 31, 2005 about 2.66 lakh groups were formed, of which, over 1.89 lakh groups have been credit linked with the bank loan of Rs 741.52 crore and Nabard refinance of Rs 306 crore.

"It has been our endeavour to scale up the SHG movement through consistent and comprehensive promotional programme for the members, NGOs and banks," said Mohanty.

Grant support to the extent of Rs 2.16 crore for promotion of 18,699 groups has been given to the banks and NGOs for promotion and linkage of SHGs in the state.

To mention that Karnataka stands first in Farmers' Club programme and Watershed Development Programme of Nabard with over 2,000 active Farmers' Clubs and over 100 watersheds assisted under WDF till date, he added.