NABARD launches scheme to fiance warehousing projects

PUNE: National Bank for Agricultural and Rural Development ( NABARD) has launched a dedicated scheme for providing assistance for creation of storage infrastructure with a corpus of Rs 5000 crore.

The "NABARD Warehousing Scheme" 2013-14 (NWS), envisages direct loans to public and private sector for construction of warehouses, silos, cold storages and cold chain infrastructure.

Funds under this scheme would be utilized for meeting the growing demand for storage capacity for agricultural commodities in the entire country and also in the wake of enactment of National Food Security Act 2013. ""Priority will be given for the projects proposed in Eastern and North Eastern states and all other deficit states from the food grain production point of view,"" stated a Nabard release.

Storage Infrastructure projects of state governments, state government undertakings, SPVs set up under PPP mode, cooperatives, federations, cooperative federations, APMCs, State level boards, apex marketing boards/bodies, Panchayats, private companies and private entrepreneurs etc., will be provided loans from this scheme. The warehouses and cold storages created from this scheme will be compliant to Warehousing Development and Regulatory Authority ( WDRA) norms.

In the State of Maharashtra, as per the present ground level position, a storage gap of 28.16 Lakh MT for warehouses and 15.89 Lakh MT for Cold storages has been estimated. The gap exists in almost all the districts of the state in varying quantities for warehousing and cold storage.

""It is expected that about 100 Lakh MT of additional modern storage would be created out of funding from NWS 2013-14 on all India basis, which would greatly benefit implementation of National Food Security Act, 2013-14 as well as help farmers in terms of better price realisation and post harvest loans,"" the release stated.