The Odisha Regional Office of Nabard recorded an over-all outstanding performance during 2015-16 disbursing Rs8,367 crore to the State Government, banks, corporations, NGOs and producer organisations against total sanctions of Rs8,800 crore.
An official release stated that the Nabard provided Rs3.000 crore under the RIDF-XXI to the State Government, showing an increase of about 15 per cent over the previous year's sanctions. Similarly, disbursements under various tranches of RIDF reached an all-time high of Rs2,264 crore, registering an increase of about 45 per cent over the previous year. With this support many RIDF projects, fluoride drinking water project of Nuapada, Upper Indravati Irrigation project in Kalahandi district and 19 megalift irrigation projects, were executed.
The cumulative RIDF sanctions and disbursements in the State as at the end of March 2016, amounted to Rs14,995 crore and Rs9,918crore respectively. Similarly, under its Warehouse Infrastructure Fund (WIF), the Nabard has sanctioned Rs1,077 crore to the State for construction of 3,725 rural go downs in the Primary Agriculture Cooperative Societies ( PACS) with a total capacity of 7.3 lakh MT.
It sanctioned refinance for short terms loans of Rs4200 crore and disbursed to the Odisha State Cooperative Bank during 2015-16.
The Nabard has identified a few major focus areas for 2016-17. These include supporting irrigation facilities in the State by providing financial assistance under special long Term Irrigation Fund with a corpus of Rs20,000 crore and enhancing capital formation in agriculture devising means and ways to augment disbursement of agricultural term loans by the banks and facilitating widening of credit to tenant farmers and share croppers.