Governments to provide 100 equity for Water Finance Copn

New Delhi, Feb 29 (UNI) Finance Minister P Chidambaram today proposed to establish Irrigation and Water Resources Finance Corporation (IWRFC) with an initial capital of Rs 100 crore of equity contributed by Centre and State Governments and financial institutions.

In his Budget speech, the Finance Minister said the setting up of the IWRFC would fulfil the need of an ambitious scheme of increasing the levels of investment in agriculture to a larger proportion. The Government only recently had approved 14 projects that satisfied certain criteria as national projects and three of them alone would require Rs 7,000 crore each during the 11th plan period. The setting of the IWRFC was aimed to meet this challenge and mobilise very large resources that will be required to fund major and medium irrigation project. The IWRFC would be an entity before March 2008, the Finance Minister said.

UNI MCN RP HS1422