NABARD’s Rs 9800 crore assistance to Punjab

The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) proposed a 22 % Y-o-Y increase in financial assistance at Rs 9,800 crore to Punjab during 2018-19 fiscal, as confirmed by Deepak Kumar, Chief General Manager, NABARD.

NABARD, the development financial institution catering to agriculture and rural development sanctioned, and disbursed Rs 8,000 crore to various stake holders for the agriculture and rural development in Punjab last year.

“In order to promote capital formation in agriculture, NABARD provided refinance of Rs 2,249.67 crore to various participating banks and refinance of Rs 5,258.26 crore was provided under short term loans for facilitating disbursement of crop loans at concessional interest rate to farmers by cooperative banks and RRBs,” he said.

Apart from this, NABARD sanctioned proposals for promotion of new 22 Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) in the State. These FPOs will be fully owned by the member farmers and have the responsibility to look after the interests of the farmers in the field of marketing of their produce and procurement of the agricultural inputs, he said.