Nabard reduces PLR for warehouse, food processing projects

Nabard today said it has reduced prime lending rate (PLR) to 9 per cent from 9.25 per cent on loan to private sector under the Warehouse Infrastructure Fund (WIF) and Food Processing Fund (FPF).
It has also reduced the rate of interest from 10 to 20 basis points (bps) on their long term refinance facility depending on the repayment period. The new rates came into effect from February 9, 2015.
Loans under WIF are given for providing loans for construction of warehouses and cold storages. On the other, FPF is meant for establishment of mega food parks and food processing units.

Nabard has already sanctioned loans valued at Rs 2,500 crore under WIF out of a total corpus of Rs 5,000 crore. It has also sanctioned loan to the tune of Rs 500 crore under FPF which was having corpus of Rs 2,000 crore so far.
"While we are hopeful of achieving the target under WIF by the fiscal-end, we may not be able to achieve the projected target in case of FPF for a simple reason that the sector of food processing was not doing well in the country and hence we haven't received good number of proposals under this fund so far," Nabard chief general manager, corporate communication, Surya Kumar told PTI.

"We have reduced the rate of interest for loans falling under the long term refinance facility to 10 bps in case of repayment period going beyond 5 years, while it has been reduced by 20 bps in case of loan with the repayment tenure of less than five years," Kumar said.
This will facilitate the banks to borrow at concessional rates to enhance their investment credit to the agriculture and rural development portfolio which contributes to the capital formation, he added.