Collector P Dayanand has directed officials and employees of Agriculture department to provide benefits of the Government’s agriculture industry scheme to the farmers of the district.
In a meeting held here, the Collector said that under this scheme, industries like rice mill, dal mill and cold storage could be established. The farmers of the district should be benefited from this group oriented scheme.
The Collector said that wide publicity of the scheme should be made in the ‘Kisan Mela’ scheduled on February 25 in Kawardha and information about it should be given to the farmers in the mela.
Deputy Director. Agriculture, Aswani Banjara and officers and employees of the department were present in the meeting. It was informed in the meeting that the number of youths trained, graduate and post graduate in Agri-clinic, Agri-business subjects has increased in the State, but due to high rate of interest on bank loan, they could not set up their enterprises.
The same fact is with the Agri-based companies also. The intention of the Government is that if grant on interest were given to these trained youths to start Agir-based units, industries could be developed in the Agriculture sector. Deputy Director Aswani Banjara said that in view of these facts, the department has launched interest grant scheme to promote agriculture industry from the current financial year, in which, an Agri-based company or Farmers Group engaged in agriculture production should be a registered institution and have legal entity.
The company engaged in primary production or related activity or involved in activities such as grading, processing, packaging, marketing etc, or working in the interest of producing members, gives bonus to the producer farmers and deposits the remaining amount in capital or reserve will be eligible for grant, under the Companies Act. Under the scheme, there is no upper limit for acquiring loans, but four per cent interest grant will be payable only upto a maximum amount of Rs 1 crore. The group having agriculture graduate or agriculture engineering members will be given priority.
It is mandatory for the applicant to bear the expenditure on the insurance of machines and equipment purchased under the scheme. The grant amount will be released only after the insurance of the machines and equipment is done.