National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) to increase warehousing capacity in the country and to explain its latest refinance scheme met top officials of scheduled commercial banks.

Nabard said the today's meet discussed in detail the operationalisation of refinance product of Nabard for warehousing. The refinance scheme incentivises banks to accelerate the pace of creation of quality warehousing facilities for agricultural commodities, particularly for reducing post-harvest losses.

The warehousing scheme was conceptualised out of a dedicated fund of Rs 2,000 crore allocated in the Union Budget. Mr Prakash Bakshi, Chairman, Nabard, said “The scheme will help in creation of around nine million tonnes of additional storage capacity in the country.

The details and modalities of the refinance scheme were explained in detail to the bankers.”

“The creation of warehouses will be the infrastructure required for the growth of agriculture sector.

The immediate storage requirement would be 150 lakh tonnes to reduce post-harvest losses in food grains.

The budgetary allocation for funding through this mechanism is going to multiply in years to come to meet the storage requirements for food security as well as to include cold storages and cold chain requirements,” he added. He also stressed the need for encouraging accredited warehouses as stipulated by Warehousing Development Regulatory Authority (WDRA) to make farmers eligible to benefit from interest subvention scheme of the Union Government for pledge loans.

While highlighting the expectation of policy makers, he said this is a business proposition for bankers and sought their support to encourage hub and spoke model to benefit farmers to store their produce at village level besides getting better price realisation.

Under this scheme, Nabard will extend financial assistance, by way of refinance, to commercial banks, regional rural banks and cooperative banks against the loans extended by them for construction of warehousing infrastructure for agricultural commodities.

It shall charge interest on refinance at the rate of eight per cent a year, while interest on the loans to the borrowers would be decided by the banks according to their existing policies.

Nabard will extend an interest rebate of 1.5 per cent to those borrowers, who repay their loans, along with interest, according to the repayment schedule prescribed by the financing bank. Interest rate rebate will be provided by Nabard once the bank certifies timely repayment by the borrower.

>anil.u@thehindu.co.in

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