Nabard sees refinancing jumping 40% on good monsoons

Bolstered by good monsoon across the country, the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) has revised its farm loan refinancing target for the fiscal by nearly 40% to Rs 1.10 lakh crore, a top official has said.

The monsoon has, in fact, resulted in a very peculiar problem for the dedicated financier around ways to fund the additional growth, the official said, adding that Nabard has requested its parent, the Reserve Bank, and the government to hike its borrowing limits to meet the target.

"We started the year with a target to provide up to Rs 80,000 crore of loans to regional rural banks and cooperative banks.
Because of the good monsoons, I feel we will do around Rs 1,10,000 crore," Nabard Chairman Prakash Bakshi told PTI.

Midway through the Kharif (summer crop) season, Nabard has already disbursed around Rs 25,000 crore towards refinancing, Bakshi said, adding that he was afraid as to the already high disbursements may increase further.

According to meteorological department data as of August 17, Kerala, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, MP, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand have had excess rainfalls this year, while it is normal for a majority of other states, including that of Punjab and Haryana.

Bihar, Jharkhand and the Northeastern the states are the only ones which have witnessed deficient rainall, but none of them are categorised as scanty, according to Met data.

Bakshi said that last fiscal, in spite of bad rains, it had witnessed a growth in refinance to RRBs and cooperatives to Rs 65,000 crore from Rs 48,000 crore in the previous fiscal.