Nabard funding for rural infrastructure crosses Rs one lakh crore

AHMEDABAD: Loans disbursed to Governments by NABARD crossed the Rs. 1,00,000 crore cumulatively and stood at Rs. 1,02,844 crore as on 30 September 2011. This included loans disbursed to 28 States and Union Territory of Puducherry as well as to the NRRDA to support the rural roads component of Bharat Nirman.

Some of the States which availed themselves of maximum financial support from NABARD for rural infrastructure were Andhra Pradesh (Rs. 9,711 cr.), Uttar Pradesh (Rs.7984 cr.), Gujarat (Rs.7,324 cr.), Tamil Nadu (Rs. 6,523 cr.), Madhya Pradesh (Rs.5,464 cr.), Maharashtra (Rs.5,493 cr,), Rajasthan (Rs.5,406 cr.) West Bengal (Rs.4,694 cr.) and Karnataka (Rs.4,406 cr.).

Rs. 1.03 lakh crore was disbursed to the governments against 4.48 lakh projects worth Rs. 1.28 lakhs sanctioned to them spread over 31 broad activities as per the infrastructure requirements in the rural and agricultural sectors.

Maximum funds were utilized for irrigation and agriculture (40%), followed by rural roads (33%), rural bridges (12%), rural drinking water supply (9%) and social sector (6%). These loans are state governments for creating infrastructure conducive not only to boost demand for agricultural credit but also to enhance the productivity of credit.

RIDF was set up with NABARD by the GoI in 1995-96 with an initial corpus of Rs. 2,000
crore. The funds were sourced by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) from Scheduled Commercial Banks in proportion to the extent of their shortfall in agriculture lending.

For the current year (under RIDF XVII), an amount of Rs. 2,000 crore has been earmarked specifically for creation of warehousing infrastructure in different states. This has opened a new channel of funding from NABARD to support streamlining of storage of food grains at the production, distribution and consumption levels, not only for state governments, but also for government owned/supported entities and private sector entities which supplement storage requirements for agricultural and allied sector products.

All the projects, on completion, will additionally create irrigation potential in 164 lakh hectare and improve 3.30 lakh km roads and create rural bridges of 6.67 lakh meters.

Some of the projects involving large financial support from NABARD are Bansagar major irrigation project in Madhya Pradesh, works in Narmada main canal projects in Gujarat, irrigation project in Narmada Valley, canal irrigation projects in Uttar Pradesh, rural drinking water supply projects in Bihar, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, high level bridges in Punjab, Bihar and Orissa, etc.

A few special innovative projects sanctioned during 2010-11 include construction of fishing jetties in Maharashtra with the aim of providing waterfront and shore-based infrastructure facilities for fishing activity, development of Beel Fisheries in Assam for undertaking a host of works like development of bund embankment, rearing & stocking centre, approach road, fish
landing centre, removal of water hyacinth, etc. A project for constructing potato cold storage was also sanctioned to the West Bengal state government, to create storage capacity of 4,000 MT.

Acknowledging the need for investing massive financial resources in further developing the infrastructure in rural areas, NABARD has now designed a new financial product viz., Nabard Infrastructure Development Assistance (NIDA) for this sector outside RIDF as well.