A large number of agriculture entrepreneurs from the state of Madhya Pradesh have benefitted from the scheme of Agriculture Infrastructure Fund, launched by the government a couple of years ago.
According to govt sources, close to 1331 agri entrepreneurs of MP have taken funding from this scheme and are busy giving shape to their dream projects. A large number of PACS, numbering 351 have also taken benefits from this scheme. In total, about 1954 agri entities have so far availed this loan in the state, govt sources add.
The second state to top the list is Andhra Pradesh where about 1424 agri projects have been funded through this scheme. A large number of PACS (1367) have taken loans from this Fund. Karnataka is a close third with more than 826 PACS availing loans from the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund.
Agriculture Infrastructure Fund aims at providing a medium-long term debt financing facility till 2025-2026. To date, a total of 8488 projects have been sanctioned under the scheme with a loan amount of Rs. 6098 crores, out of which, Rs. 2071 crores have been disbursed for 4003 projects.
This information was given in a written reply by the Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Shri Narendra Singh Tomar in Lok Sabha on Tuesday.
“Rs 1 lakh crore Agri Infrastructure Fund for farm-gate infrastructure for farmers Financing facility of Rs. 1,00,000 crores will be provided for funding Agriculture Infrastructure Projects at farm-gate & aggregation points (Primary Agricultural Cooperative Societies, Farmers Producer Organizations, Agriculture entrepreneurs, Start-ups, etc.)”, announced Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman during her budgetary speech in 2020.
According to the information given by Minister Narendra Singh Tomar in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday, there are 53 agri start-ups in the country which are being funded under this scheme. Similarly, the number of FPOs benefitting from this scheme is also very low (61).
The Agri Infrastructure Fund, however, is being used extensively by PACS across states as well as by the agriculture entrepreneurs spread across the country. 5067 PACS and about 2576 entrepreneurs have availed of this loan so far.
The states of the northeast such as Arunachal and Sikkim are laggards in using this fund. So is the state of Bihar which claims to be primarily an agrarian state. Merely 65 entities, of which 40 are PACS have used this Fund so far in Bihar.
