Union Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Minister Radha Mohan Singh has resorted to social media to announce all the stalled irrigation projects in the country would be completed by the NDA govt latest by 2019, which means by the end of this govt’s term.
Singh’s tweet read “Govt starts work on 99 stalled irrigation projects” and he attaches a report appeared in livemint.com to prove his point.
With a view to fighting drought and tackling the challenge of growing incidence of farmer suicide in arid areas across the country, the Modi govt. has declared a resolve to complete most long pending irrigation projects latest by 2019, reports Mint.
The total cost of projects is estimated at Rs.77,595 crore, to be spent over four years.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had earlier announced the creation of a long-term irrigation fund of Rs.20,000 crore under the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) in this year’s budget following consecutive years of drought in the country.
Of the Rs.20,000 crore, Nabard will get around Rs.1,000-1,500 crore from the budget. It will raise around Rs.6,000 crore through bonds at an interest rate of around 7.4% from the market but this will be repaid by the government.
Nabard will separately raise around Rs.12,000 crore through bonds at an interest rate of 7.5%, which will be repaid by Nabard itself, a source close to Nabard says.
This will be the first time that the apex rural bank will be lending to both, the central and the state governments, for irrigation.