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The regional office of the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) has sanctioned Rs 8,800 crore in Odisha under the categories of loans to state government, refinance support to banks and direct loans in 2015-16.
Against these sanctions, the regional office has disbursed Rs 8,367 crore to the state government, banks, corporations and other agencies.
During 2015-16, the support extended to the state government under Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF) XXI was Rs 3,000 crore, registering an increase of about 15% over the previous year’s sanctions. Similarly, the disbursement under various tranches of RIDF has reached an all-time high of Rs 2,264 crore, an increase of about 45% over the previous year.
“Odisha has always been one of the biggest beneficiaries of RIDF of Nabard, under which loans are extended to the state government for creation of critical rural infrastructure projects like irrigation, roads, bridges etc,” said a release.
To enable the cooperative banks and the regional rural banks in the state to meet the production credit needs of farmers, Nabard provides short-term refinance to these institutions at subsidised interest rates.
Refinance for short-term loans of Rs 4,200 crore were sanctioned and disbursed to the Odisha State Cooperative Bank during 2015-16. It also disbursed long-term refinance of Rs 512 crore to commercial banks, Odisha State Cooperative Bank and one micro-finance institutions during the year. Out of the total refinance extended, refinance of Rs 63 crore was extended on soft terms to the Odisha State Cooperative Bank under the Long Term Rural Credit Fund, a dedicated fund instituted by the Government of India in Nabard.
Under its Warehouse Infrastructure Fund (WIF) for supporting the creation of warehouse infrastructure in the states, Nabard has sanctioned Rs 1,077 crore to the Odisha government for construction of 3,725 rural godowns in the primary agriculture cooperative societies in various districts of the state, with a total capacity of 0.73 million tonnes.
During 2015-16, an amount of Rs 160 crore was released to the state and cumulative disbursement now stood at Rs 184 crore under WIF by the end of March 2016. Among others, it has given an amount of Rs 900 crore to the Odisha State Civil Supplies Corporation for its food grain procurement operations in the last fiscal.
