Nabard lays foundation stone for agri business centre at Hisar

Nabard Chairman Harsh Kumar Bhanwala today laid the foundation stone for an agri business incubation centre (ABIC) in Haryana Agricultural University (HAU) here.
The ABIC at HAU is among the first two centres funded by Nabard anywhere in the country - the other being in Madurai district of Tamil Nadu.
Nabard has sanctioned a grant assistance of Rs 11.75 crore towards the capital and recurring expenditure of this centre.
Bhanwala said that under the Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF), Rs 2,90,000 crore has been sanctioned as financial assistance to the state governments since 1995- 96.
Speaking on the theme of 'nurturing business, incubation and entrepreneurial approach in agriculture', he opined that though India has made great strides in every sphere of the economy, agriculture still remains the mainstay, but can perform better.

It was imperative to focus on innovations and entrepreneurship development for increasing the productivity of land, encouraging crop diversification and exploring new and more remunerative marketing channels, he said.

The youth, specially in rural areas, should strive for becoming employment generators instead of employment seekers, he said.
He added that the youth is not keen to join agriculture therefore there is need to glamorise the farm sector.
More importantly, there is a need to develop agri- business entrepreneurs/agripreneurs who can work with farmers, he said.
Realising the importance of agri business incubation centres in creating employment and also for supplementing the efforts of the Centre in its mission to double the income of farmers, Nabard has embarked on a programme for providing financial support for setting up ABICs in agricultural universities, he said.

The ABICs would be setup as a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), he said.
These centres will provide single-window access for all agri business activities within the institution for consultancy, consortia and incubation, encourage associations to lead the projects in the initial stages, meet the specific objectives of mobilising resources, obtaining finance, transferring risk and performing specific investment activities, he said.