New Delhi:
The Centre on Tuesday informed Parliament that only one state, Gujarat, has so far submitted a proposal for upgradation of agri-marketing infrastructure in 133 APMC mandis under the Rs 2,000-crore agri-market infrastructure fund.
The government had in the Budget 2018-19 announced setting up of an Agri-Market Infrastructure Fund (AMIF) with a corpus of Rs 2,000 crore for developing and upgrading agri-marketing infrastructure in 22,000 gramin agricultural markets (GrAMs) and 585 agricultural produce market committees (APMCs).
Responding to a query whether it is true that no state has submitted proposals under this scheme, Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar said, ”It is a demand-driven scheme. States are being persuaded to submit the proposal/DPRs (detailed project reports) to avail the assistance under this scheme.” ”So far, the State Government of Gujarat has submitted a proposal for upgradation of agricultural marketing infrastructure in 133 APMCs,” he said in a written reply to a query in the Lok Sabha.
The minister said the government had circulated the scheme guidelines to the states and Union Territories (UTs) for submission of proposals under the scheme. To achieve the above objective, the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) has set up the AMIF fund of Rs 2,000 crore. The states may avail loan from NABARD on recommendation of their proposal/DPRs by the Union agriculture ministry, he said.
Interest rate to states will be current market borrowing rate by NABARD plus 0.6 per cent handling charges by the bank minus fixed interest subvention of 3 per cent by the ministry, he added.
