The funds sanctioned by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) to Odisha crossed Rs10,000 crore in 2014-15, an increase of 57 per cent over the previous fiscal. The disbursement of loans during the fiscal has also registered a 35 per cent surge over 2013-14, crossing Rs8,000 crore. loans are extended to the State Government under different heads for critical rural infrastructure projects such as irrigation, roads and bridges.
In 2014-15, the sanctions under RIDF- XX was Rs2,652 crore, up by 150 per cent over the previous year and forming more than 10 per cent of the all-India availability of funds under RIDF, the highest allocation to any State in the country,” the Nabard release said, adding that the disbursement under various tranches of RIDF crossed Rs1,500 crore in the fiscal. It informed that the cumulative RIDF sanctions and disbursements in Odisha at the end of March 2015, amounted to Rs11,995 crore and Rs7,654 crore, respectively. Under a separate Warehouse Infrastructure Fund (WIF) created in 2014-15, the bank has committed loan support of Rs964 crore to the State for construction of more than 3,375 rural godowns with a total capacity of 7.3 lakh MT in the Primary Agriculture Cooperative Societies (PACs).
Moreover, to enable cooperative banks and regional rural banks to meet the production credit needs of farmers, NABARD provides short-term refinance to these institutions at subsidised interest rates. “Refinance for short-terms loans of Rs4,900 crore were sanctioned and disbursed during 2014-15,” it said. During the year, 14 watershed development projects were sanctioned for implementation in Odisha. Cumulatively, a total of 75 watershed projects were under implementation in the State at the end of March 2015, with financial assistance of 42.53 crore and benefitting 16,000 families and an area of nearly 44,000 hectares.