Mumbai, Apr 28 (UNI) The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) announced on Thursday that its balance sheet for the financial year 2021-22 has grown to Rs 7,57,246 crore, as compared to Rs 6,57,798 crore of last year, registering a significant growth of 15.08 per cent.

Similarly, the loan portfolio of the bank has increased as on March 31, 2022 to Rs 6,80,731 crore, up by 12.89 per cent over Rs 6,03,000 crore of last year, Dr G R Chintala, chairman, NABARD, said while announcing the financial performance here.

Total disbursement during the fiscal stood at Rs 3,77,086 crore, as against Rs 3,50,022 crore in last fiscal, marking a growth of 7.73 per cent.

In a bid to support agriculture and rural development activities, NABARD has reported an all-time high refinance disbursement of Rs 2.68 lakh crore during the year 2021-22, as against a total refinance disbursement of Rs 2.23 lakh crore extended in the previous year, he said.

Extending support to the financial institutions in the second and third wave of the pandemic, NABARD has infused adequate liquidity by disbursing Rs 24,399.44 crore under Special Liquidity Facility – 2.

NABARD's flagship programme, Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF), set up with an initial corpus of Rs 2,000 crore in 1995-96, has now grown to Rs 40,000 crore in 2021-22 (Tranche XXVII).

The cumulative sanction under RIDF as on March 31, 2022 stood at Rs 4.55 lakh crore to cover about 7.43 lakh projects across the country, which would boost agriculture, irrigation, rural connectivity, social sector among others.

Further, sanction to the tune of Rs 46,073 crore has been accorded during the current year as on March 31, 2022, as against Rs 34,830 crore during 2020-21, noting a growth of over 32 per cent over the previous year.

The RIDF disbursements aggregated to Rs 33,883 crore as on March 31, 2022, Dr Chintala said.

Under the Warehouse Infrastructure Fund, the development bank has sanctioned 7,594 projects with a cumulative sanction of Rs 9,709 crore to create an agriculture storage capacity of 127.01 lakh metric tonnes across the country.

Out of these, about 5,529 projects with 59.71 lakh MT capacity have been completed, he added.

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