NABARD Extended Rs 3,472.24 Cr Assistance to Karnataka During FY 2009-10

From Our Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network - Bangalore

Bangalore, Apr 9: National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) had extended financial assistance to the tune of Rs 3472.24 crore to Karnataka during financial year 2009-10.

The NABARD financial assistance included refinance assistance to banks in Karnataka to the tune of Rs 2823.50 crore towards production and investment credit, according to Dr Venkatesh Tagat, Chief General Manager.

Addressing a news conference in Bangalore on Friday, he said the Bank had also extended Rs 610.57 crore assistance to the state government for rural infrastructure development and a grant and loan of about Rs 38.18 crore for various promotional interventions.

NABARD has estimated a potential for credit deployment of Rs 37,000 crore in Karnataka in 2010-11, including Rs 17,250 crore for crop loans, Rs 6,674 crore for term credit in agriculture and allied activities besides Rs 13,340.53 crore for non-farm sector, agro and food processing sector and other priority sectors.

He said the Bank would give a special thrust to Rural Infrastructure Development Fund for financing the agro processing sector with focus on strengthening supply cahin management in the current year.

Tagat said special focus would be on organic farming, development of the horticulture sector, watershed and tribal development,transfer of technology, credit and access to market information to farmers through formation of Joint Liability Group of farmers, capacity building of members of farmers clubs and self-help groups to act as business facilitators and capacity building for cooperative credit delivery system.

In 2009-10, NABARD extended refinance support of Rs 2,028 crore to meet short-term credit needs for agriculture. This included Rs 1483 crore for state cooperative banks, district central cooperative banks and Rs 545 crore for Regional Rural banks.

Refinance of Rs 744.86 crore was extended towards investment credit to aid capital formation in farm and non-farm sectors. While the farm sector accounted for Rs 311.38 crore, microfinance/Self Help Groups and NFS accounted for Rs 224.63 crore and Rs 208.86 crore respectively.

The cumulative refinance support from NABARD towards investment creditin Karnataka aggregated Rs 9060.42 crore, he said.

NABARD sanctioned Rs 656.55 crore to Karnataka for rural infrastructure in 2009-10. An amount of Rs 610.57 crore was disbursed, which marked a 35% increase over previous year.

Under Watershed development, NABARD sanctioned Rs 2590 lakh grant support and sanctioned Rs 2613 lakh assistance, including Rs 1,022.50 lakh loan reimbursement to the state government. Under Rural Innovation Fund, 12 projects involving an assistance of Rs 75.688 lakh were sanctioned. An amount of Rs 38.435 lakh for 20 new projects under the farm technology transfer fund during the year were sanctioned.

A refinance of Rs 222.87 crore was released to 19,678 SHGS during the year under Microfinance.

During 2009-10, 2.94 lakh farmers were covered under the Kisan Credit card Scheme by RRBs and coops and 2.05 lakh by commercial banks.

Tagat said Rs 850 crore will be sanctioned to the State under the Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF) in 2010-11. The State had utilised Rs 456 crore in 2008-09, Rs. 610 crore in 2009-10. Of the Rs 850 crore, nearly Rs 400 crore would be sanctioned to flood-affected 14 north Karnataka districts.

"Under RIDF, the credit utilisation rate was 90 % from one to 10 tranches and disbursements were going on for tranches between 11 and 15. The estimates for 16th tranche for 2010-11 will be finalised soon,” he said.

He said the disbursement of investment credit for various projects has declined from Rs 1052 crore in 2008-09 to Rs 745 crore in 2009-10 on account of droughts and floods in north Karnataka.

NABARD, which launched RIDF in 1995, prepares each tranche for each financial year, The sanctioned projects sanctioned under the RIDF have made an impact in the form of increased irrigation potential, recharge of groundwater, flood protection, rural connectivity, storage capacity, marketing facilities, increase in literary rate, according to NABARD officials.