The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development
(Nabard) has announced a scheme with a corpus of Rs.5,000 crore for
providing loans to the public and private sector to meet the growing
demand of storage capacity of agricultural commodities in the country.
Termed
‘Nabard Warehousing Scheme (NWS) 2013-14’, assistance will be given for
construction of warehouses, silos, cold storages and cold chain
infrastructure to state governments, state government undertakings,
Special Purpose Vehicles set up under PPP mode, cooperatives,
federations, cooperative federations, APMCs, state level boards, apex
marketing boards, panchayats, private companies and private
entrepreneurs.
Nabard Chief General Manager, Tamil
Nadu Regional Office, Lalitha Venkatesan said Tamil Nadu has a storage
gap of 10 lakh tonnes for warehouses and 1.50 lakh tonnes for cold
storage.
The gap is found to be high in the districts
of Ariyalur, Dharmapuri, Kanyakumari, Krishnagiri, Madurai, Pudukottai,
Ramanathapuram, Salem, Theni, Tirunelveli, Tiruppur, Tiruvarur,
Vellore, Villupuram and Virudhunagar.
During the last
two year, Nabard had sanctioned loan assistance of Rs.684 crore for
creation of 7.77 lakh tonnes capacity of warehouse and cold storage
infrastructure in the State through various State government departments
and corporation.
