K'taka to get Nabard aid

The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) will formulate a farm credit package to enable cooperative credit institutions to extend farm loans at 7 per cent interest.

A restructuring package for cooperative sugar factories will also be formulated as envisaged by the Centre, subject to support from Karnataka.

Nabard chief general manager B B Mohanty told reporters in Dharwad that said Nabard will pursue with the state government the implementation of revitalisation package for cooperative institutions finalised by the Government of India based on Vaidyanathan Committee's recommendations. He said that the RRBs in the state will be provided all guidance to function more effectively in the post-merger scenario.

He said that the Nabard has provided an assistance of Rs 2,410 crore to Karnataka in 2005-2006. Nabard chief general manager B B Mohanty told reporters in Dharwad that the assistance had gone up by 10 per cent as against Rs 2196 crore in the previous fiscal.

Giving the details he said that Nabard had provided Rs 1,951 crore towards production and investment credit of Rs 451 crore to Karnataka for rural infrastructure and Rs 8 crore grant towards various promotional interventions.

He said the Nabard has formulated a scheme for providing support to cooperatives and regional rural banks to address their liquidity gap on account of implementation of the relief package announced by the Centre. Mohanty said that till the end of March 2006 an amount of Rs 231 crore has been sanctioned to RRBs in Karnataka.

Mohanty said that Karnataka stood first in the implementation of Farmers' Club programme in the country with 2,852 clubs functioning with a grant of Rs 75 lakh this financial year for conducting promotional activities.

Stating that Karnataka is one of the pioneers in microfinance, Mohanty informed that the cumulative number of self help groups (SHGs) formed stood at 2.97 lakh covering 45 lakh rural families. These groups have received credit support to the tune of Rs 944 crore. He said 30,000 new SHGs were expected to be formed and an additional 45,000 groups will be credit linked.