State highlights measures to develop agri infra, enhance farmers’ income

Kolkata: Ahead of the Panchayat polls, the state government under the leadership of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee sought to highlight the efforts taken to strengthen agriculture infrastructure to enhance farmers’ income and employment opportunities by promoting value addition and better market connections.

In an issued statement, the state government highlighted several steps initiated in the last few years in this direction, including the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund (AIF) and convergence of subsidy-linked schemes and proactively facilitating project finance by banks for the creation of agricultural infrastructure by farmers, agri-entrepreneurs, FPOs and PACS.

It said that the AIF rolled out for implementation last year has a remarkable outcome in a short period and boosted agriculture infrastructure financing in all districts. Total sanctioned projects under the initiative have reached 1000 with a project cost of Rs 1325 crore. These include 51 cold storages, oil mills, dal mills, 185 packaging and grading facilities, 138 warehouses and 500 farm machinery hubs etc. sanctioned by banks and disbursement done in 881 projects as on April 14, 2023.

AIF extends interest subvention of 3 per cent on project loan by banks and loan up to Rs 2 crore in each case is secured under Credit Guarantee Fund Trust, thereby eliminating the need for collateral security for loan sanction.

In the case of PACS/cooperatives, interest on project loans is only 1 per cent under the scheme. In addition, applicants can avail of benefits of subsidy under any scheme like farm mechanisation, financial assistance under Agricultural Marketing Infrastructure schemes, MIDH schemes etc.

Awareness about the benefits of the scheme, handholding for preparation of detailed project reports, application to banks and facilitating approvals by banks by district-level monitoring committees under District Magistrates and regular reviews at the state level with banks has made this initiative successful in the entire state.

Duare Sarkar camps generated good response and demand for the initiative and helped several applicants to avail benefits, the state government claimed.

Individual applications are tracked and followed up through a real-time project monitoring portal and statutory clearances for land, environment, fire etc are cleared on a fast track through a single window facility, it highlighted.