Odisha to submit Rs 1300-cr proposal to Nabard

The Odisha government will submit a Rs 1300-crore proposal to National Bank for Agriculture & Rural Development (Nabard) for projects to be taken up under the 18th tranche of Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF).

The decision to submit the proposal to Nabard was taken at a meeting of the high powered committee held on Wednesday under the chairmanship of development commissioner R N Senapati in the presence of Nabard chief general manager K K Gupta."The concerned departments have been asked to submit detailed project reports (DPRs) for the identified projects. The projects would be executed mainly by the departments of agriculture, works and rural development. Under the 17th tranche of RIDF, Nabard had sanctioned Rs 1271 crore for the state for implementation of 30,967 projects. The state government has clocked an expenditure of nearly Rs 1000 crore under the 17th tranche”, said a senior government official.

 

For the 18th tranche of RIDF, the state government has identified around 25,000 projects in agriculture sector, 139 projects in rural development and 54 projects in works department.

It may be noted that the state high powered committee had submitted total proposals of Rs 5921.56 crore to Nabard under RIDF in three financial years- 2008-09, 2009-10 and 2010-11,

Orissa's record of spending RIDF funds has been quite lacklustre. Of the Rs 1081 crore disbursed by Nabard under RIDF between 2004-05 and 2010-11, the spending has been only Rs 323 crore till now.

It may be noted that out of over 14000 projects supposed to be executed in the state under RIDF, only 6000 odd projects have been commissioned.

The departments implementing RIDF projects include rural development, works, water resources and fisheries and animal resources development to name a few.Nabard had recently expressed its deep concern over the inordinate delay in the implementation and expenditure of projects in the state funded by it.

Taking note of Nabard's discontent, state finance minister Prafulla Chandra Ghadai had advised all departmental secretaries to review the progress of expenditure under RIDF at monthly intervals.

The secretaries were also asked to furnish monthly reports to the finance department indicating the progress of expenditure vis-a-vis the target by the 10th of the succeeding month.