New Delhi: In a bid to support agri sector amid COVID-19 crisis, National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development on Thursday said it aims to disburse Rs 1.20 lakh crore crop loan to farmers for meeting production expenses this fiscal. Apex agriculture financial institution Nabard annually disbursed Rs 90,000 crore crop loan at a concessional rate.
“It has been enhanced to Rs 1.20 lakh crore this fiscal. Of this, Rs 40,000 crore has already been disbursed,” National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) Chairman G R Chintala said. Speaking at CII event, he said, the pandemic saw a paradigm shift in the functioning of the agriculture sector, and with the help of Rs 1 lakh crore Agriculture Infrastructure Fund under the Atmanirbhar Bharat package will foster infrastructure for the sector.
Under the scheme, Rs 10,000 crore has been earmarked for the current fiscal and Rs 30,000 crore each year for the next three years, Nabard said in a statement. “It will play a crucial role in flowing credit for setting up critical agriculture infrastructure at the ground level and it will create 25 lakh tonnes of capacities under the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund. We are also partnering with most commercial banks to provide credit to micro food processing units associated with the local Kirana units,” Chintala said.
With the upcoming launch of the scheme for promotion of 10,000 Farmers Producer Organisations (FPOs) in the country, the agriculture sector will experience quality production combined with an industry-centric vision, he added. Speaking at the event, Minister of State for Agriculture Parshottam Rupala suggested Nabard to digitise the crop loan subvention scheme process, so that the farmers can settle the loans at zero per cent in real-time and seamlessly.
ITC Chairman and managing director Sanjiv Puri said COVID-19 pandemic has made businesses emerge from survival to revival phase, and now post COVID-19, there will be the ‘Next Normal’ where path-breaking digitally-driven reforms will change the trends forever. “A key achievement has been the speed and alacrity of the digital penetration that has been achieved, which otherwise might have taken years to achieve. In fact, 10 years’ worth of digital penetration has been achieved in the matter of weeks of the pandemic,” Puri said.
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