Kerala: NABARD releases subsidy for schemes

Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 16: The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) has released subsidy amount to the tune of Rs 526 lakh under the Centre's various investment subsidy schemes and Rs 15.24 lakh under the National Project on organic farming.

According to a release here today, subsidies ranging from 15 to 33.33 per cents were given to farmers for construction of rural godowns, cold storages and creation of other marketing infrastructure in the rural areas to cater the post-harvest handling and farm product marketing.

The schemes also aimed at enhancement of returns to the producers through reduction of market intermediaries, promoting grading, standardisation and quality certification and introduction of negotiable warehousing receipt system.

During this fiscal, four rural godowns and 19 agricultural marketing infrastructure projects were sanctioned and subsidy assistance of Rs 6.38 lakh and Rs 89.92 lakh respectively were released till September.

The agricultural marketing infrastructure scheme included the the state government's marketing infrastructure projects, financed under the NABARD's Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF), for the development of Kayamkulam Fisheries Harbour. An amount of Rs 179.36 lakh had been released so far to the state government as subsidy for this, the release added.

UNI