The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) put credit potential for the State at Rs 23,746 crore for the financial year 2019-20. The credit potential was disclosed for advancing the priority sector, especially farming and allied activities.
Releasing the State Focus Paper on Friday Chief General Manager of the rural financing bank Sharad Jha presented insight for all the districts of Jharkhand and the significance of the exercise. “Objectives like macro perspectives on the present and emerging potentials in priority sector, promotion of rural infrastructure, facility and other support services both existing and planned by the Government, Banks and other stake holders would be met through this,” said the CGM.
He on the occasion also highlighted some of the major interventions of NABARD such as Rs 1,460 crore of assistance released for rural infrastructure projects during 2018-19, a wide gamut of farm sector and non-farm sector interventions, support for various grass root level institutions, technology interventions under financial inclusion, digitisation of SHGs etc.
“Government officials and bankers should work for facilitating increase in ground level credit flow to priority sector, especially for agriculture and weaker sections of society and work even more for higher growth in agriculture. Role of everyone is there in doubling the farm income,” said Jha.
The theme for NABARD’s State Focus Paper 2019-20 is “Sustainable Agriculture Practices”. The paper seeks to highlight that agriculture in Jharkhand faces multipronged set of challenges, further aggravated by the extreme weather variations. A resilient agricultural production system is pre-requisite to sustain productivity in the State, it underlined.
Food and Civil Supplies Minister Saryu Roy stressed on strengthening cooperative structures in Jharkhand. “After amalgamation, the Jharkhand State Cooperative Bank has become a single entity and they have to compete with the Commercial Banks in which PACS would play a pivotal role. NABARD has done good job while providing overall support to the cooperative movement in the State. All the stakeholders should now also work together for organic farming,” said Roy while requesting bankers to have a proper assessment of credit flow amongst all stakeholders to get a balanced credit distribution. A knowledge sharing and interactive session involving several beneficiaries of NABARD’s tribal development schemes also took place. Chandramohan Bediya, one of the famers from Durleta village that has been recognised as first organic village of Jharkhand was also present on the occasion.
The NABARD’s State Focus Paper indicated in details the credit potential in the State under priority sector, the sub-sectoral trends in credit flow, road map for development of agriculture and allied sectors and critical infrastructure required for key findings.
Also present there was Commissioner of MGNREGA cum CEO of Jharkhand State Watershed Mission Siddharth Tripathy, Swami Bhaveshanand ji of RK Mission Vincent Lakra, DGM, SLBC and senior bank officials.