Uttar Pradesh State Cooperative Bank and District Central Cooperative Banks have jointly identified 244 Primary Agricultural Credit Cooperative Societies (PACCs) in Uttar Pradesh in the first phase, for the creation of infrastructure with Nabard’s concessional refinance and providing interest subvention under the recently launched Agriculture Infrastructure Fund (AIF).
Uttar Pradesh State Co-op Bank CEO Bhupendra Vishnoi said to Indian Cooperative that, “We have identified 246 PACCs in the first phase. As there are 7479 PACCs in the state and we hope that 2500 can take the benefit of this scheme in near future”.
“We will hand over the in-principle sanction amount to these 246 PACs identified under Agriculture Infrastructure Fund (AIF) and conversion to Multi Service Centres under Nabard’s ‘Special Refinance Facility- Transformation of PACs as Multi Service Centres”, he added.
Vishnoi further said, ” Nabard has also given the sanction letter for providing the fund to convert the PACCs into multi service centres on the occasion of launching of AIF in the presence of State Cooperative Minister Mukut Bihari Verma on Sunday in Lucknow. Now the selected PACCs will send the Detail Project Report (DPR) to their respective DCCBs. After analysing the DPR then only will we sanction the fund accordingly.
AIF is the dedicated finance facility which will run for 10 years under which banks and financial institutions will extend loans with interest subvention of 3% per annum. The fund will be used to augment post-harvesting facilities, community farming assets, and help Farmer Producer Organisations. It also seeks to extend financial assistance to the agri-entrepreneurs.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a financing facility of Rs 1 lakh crore under the Agricultural Infrastructure Fund through a video conference on Sunday and he also interacted with a few members of PACCs.
Speaking on the occasion through a video conference, Modi said the country has a huge opportunity to invest in post-harvest management solutions like warehousing, cold chain, and food processing, and build a global presence in areas such as organic and fortified foods.