Hyderabad: The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development formalised a pact with governments of respective states on Tuesday on extending soft loans to the tune of Rs 77,095 crore over the next four years for 99 irrigation projects across the country. The funds will help early completion of these projects, including schemes intended to ensure supplies to tail-end areas of the projects. The 56 AIBP projects will cover almost all drought-prone districts in 18 states of the country.
The state governments need to pay back the loan amount in 15 years. The national water agency, Union water resources ministry and Nabard officials signed the pact on Tuesday in Delhi in presence of Water resources minister Uma Bharti, Union minister of state for water resources Sanjeev Balyan, vice-chairman of Niti-Aayog Arvind Panagariya, Irrigation ministers T. Harish Rao (TS), Brijmohan Agrawal (Chhattisgarh) and Girish Mahajan (Maharashtra).
Of the total funds, Rs 48,546 crore would be spent on early completion of projects, and the remaining 29,049 crore would be earmarked for tail-end areas. Hailing the MoU, Mr Rao said this was the first of its kind in the country in that the Union water resources ministry has come forward to help states in taking up and completing projects sought by them. He said with implementing the schemes with assistance from Nabard, it was likely over 76 lakh acres would get assured irrigation.
Mr Rao pointed out that hitherto, the Central government used to sanction funds under Accelerated Irrigation Beneficial Programme to various states in the range of 20 to 60 per cent of the total project cost and respective states had to bear the remaining amount, but with the latest MoU, Nabard would provide the remaining amount to the states at a very lower interest rate. Mr Rao said that TS would receive Rs 7,000 crore towards completion of 11 projects under the initiative, including the Devadula lift Irrigation scheme.
