Nabard disburses Rs 20,500 crore to coop banks, RRBs

National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) on Monday said it has disbursed Rs 20,500 crore to cooperative banks and regional rural banks (RRBs) for on-lending to farmers.

This amount, is part of the Rs 25,000 crore of special refinance facility provided by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to Nabard for refinancing regional rural banks (RRBs), cooperative banks and micro finance institutions (MFIs).

"We have extended Rs 20,500 crore with Rs 15,200 crore to cooperative banks and the balance of Rs 5,300 crore to RRBs as special liquidity facilities in various states," Nabard said in a release.

The fund is given as a means of front loading the resources of cooperative banks and RRBs so as to ensure adequate liquidity with them for financing farmers for taking up pre-monsoon and kharif 2020 operations, it added.

In the first quarter of last fiscal, Nabard had lent Rs 5,000 crore to cooperative banks and RRBs.

Of the Rs 25,000 crore special refinance facility provided by the RBI, Nabard had allocated Rs 23,000 crore for lending to cooperative banks and RRBs, and Rs 2,000 crore for MFIs, its chief general manager (refinance department) Jiji Mammen said.

"We have already disbursed Rs 20,500 crore to cooperative banks and RRBs for on-lending to farmers starting May. We plan to disburse the balance amount in the next two weeks," Mammen said.

He said of the Rs 2,000 crore, Rs 1,550 crore has already been disbursed to MFIs.

Besides Nabard, the RBI had announced to provide special facility worth Rs 15,000 crore to Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) and Rs 10,000 crore to the National Housing Bank (NHB).

Nabard further said the banks have also initiated a programme of saturation of Kisan Credit Cards and about 12 lakh new KCC cards have been issued by cooperative banks and RRBs during the last two months.

A total of 4.2 crore KCCs have been issued by cooperative banks and RRBs as on March 31, 2020.