Rs 4,000-cr NABARD funds for agriculture refinance in Andhra

Visakhapatnam, April 21: Andhra Pradesh will receive Rs 4,000 crore assistance from the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) under its agriculture refinance scheme for the fiscal year 2011-12.

"An amount of Rs 3,500 crore was given under agriculture refinance to the state in year 2010-11 and for the following fiscal we have set a target of Rs 4,000-crore," NABARD Chief General Manager P Mohanaiah told reporters here.

He said an amount of Rs 1,400-crore would be provided to AP under its Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF) for 2011-12 as against Rs 1,237-crore in the previous fiscal.

Stating that the bank had taken up several welfare and development schemes for the rural and girijan people, Mohaniah said it has invested Rs 400-crore for watershed programmes in rural areas of AP from 2008-09 onwards in sixteen districts under a five-year-programme to provide irrigation water to 4.8 lakh hectares of land across the state.

The bank has taken up about 440 projects in the state and village committees would implement these programmes with the help of technical guidance from experts and people from NGO sector, he said.

The CGM also said the bank has also promoted horticulture development under a seven-year programme and has invested Rs 140-crore, benefiting 38,000 families in the state in girijan areas.

He said for people those who had no land in the agency area, bee keeping programme would be taken up after providing training in the sector for tribals. He said the bank has already taken up one such project in Araku in Visakhapatnam district and five hundred families would be benefited by the scheme.

PTI