Financial, Developmental and Supervision are three broad heads which enable NABARD to touch almost every aspect of rural economy: providing refinance support, building rural infrastructure, preparing district level credit plans, guiding and motivating the banking industry in achieving credit targets, supervising Cooperative Banks and Regional Rural Banks (RRBs), helping them develop sound banking practices, enabling them to on-board to the CBS platform, designing new projects for rural development, implementing GoI's development schemes, training handicraft artisans and providing them a marketing platform for selling their articles among others.

A) FINANCIAL FUNCTIONS

Refinance - Short Term Loans

Crop loans are extended to farmers for crop production by financial institutions, which support in ensuring food security in the country. During the year 2017-18, NABARD has sanctioned short-term credit limits of Rs 55,000 crore for Seasonal Agricultural Operations to financial institutions.

Long Term Loans

NABARD's long-term refinance provides credit to financial institutions for a wide gamut of activities encompassing farm and non-farm activities with tenors of 18 months to more than 5 years. Under this facility, during the year 2017-18, refinance of Rs 65,240 crore has been exended to financial institutions, which included concessional finance of Rs 15,000 crore to Cooperative Banks and RRBs from the allocation made out of Priority Sector Shortfall of Scheduled commercial Banks under Long-Term Rural Credit Fund.

Rural Infrastructure Development Fund

RIDF was set up with NABARD in 1995-96 by the Reserve Bank of India out of the shortfall in lending to priority sector by scheduled commercial banks for supporting rural infrastructure projects. NABARD disbursed Rs 24,993 crore here during 2017-18. RIDF contributes substantially to the rural infrastructure funding in the country today.

Long-Term Irrigation Fund

The Long-Term Irrigation Fund (LTIF) in NABARD with an initial corpus of Rs 20,000 crore for funding 99 irrigation projects during 2016-17 following announcement in the Union Budget, was further supplemented with additional allocation of Rs 20,000 crore in the Union Budget during 2017-18. Out of the total estimated and approved financial requirement of Rs 77,595 crore for these projects under LTIF, an amount of Rs 49,726.54 crore was sanctioned during 2017-18. In addition to the 99 projects, two more projects namely Polavaram National Project from Andhra Pradesh and North Koel Reservoir Project from Bihar and Jharkhand with total sanction of Rs 6,360.15 crore were included for funding under LTIF taking the total amount sanctioned to Rs 56,086.69 crore.

Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana - Grameen (PMAY-G)

NABARD sanctioned an amount of Rs 9,000 crore and released Rs 7329.43 crore during 2017-18 to the National Rural Infrastructure Development Agency (NRIDA). The financial assistance was channelized towards PMAY-G, which plans to provide a pucca house, with basic amenities, to all houseless households including those living in kutcha and dilapidated houses, by 2022.

NABARD Infrastructure Development Assistance

NABARD Infrastructure Development Assistance (NIDA), has been designed to complement RIDF. This line of credit has been opened to financially sound State-owned institutions and corporations with sustained income streams. During 2017-18, we sanctioned 15 projects involving Rs 7,465 crore under NIDA and disbursed Rs 2,921 crore.

Warehouse Infrastructure Fund

GoI created Warehouse Infrastructure Fund (WIF) in the year 2013- 14 with NABARD with a corpus of Rs 5,000 crore for providing loans to meet the requirements for scientific warehousing infrastructure for agricultural commodities in the country. The Cummulative Disbustments as on 31st March 2018 stood at Rs 4778 Crore.

Food processing fund

With a view to promoting food processing industry in the organised sector on a cluster basis, GoI instituted a Special Fund in NABARD in 2014-15 with a corpus of Rs 2,000 crore. As on 31 March 2018, 11 Mega Food Park projects, one Integrated Food Park project and three Food Processing Units have been sanctioned with a loan commitment of Rs 541 crore. Against it, Rs 256 crore has been disbursed.

Direct Lending to Cooperative Banks

During 2017-18, we assisted 58 CCBs and four StCBs spread across 14 states to the tune of Rs 4,849 crore.

Credit Facility to Marketing Federations (CFF)

In order to strengthen the arms of Marketing Federations/Cooperatives, we established a separate line of credit, viz. Credit Facility to Federations, which promotes marketing of agricultural produce and other farm activities. During 2017-18, we disbursed an amount of Rs 25,436 crore. The cumulative disbursement under CFF since inceptiostood at Rs 58,610 crore as on 31 March 2018.

Credit to Producer Organizations & PACS

NABARD set up Producer Organizations Development Fund (PODF) with an initial corpus of Rs 50 crore to support and finance Producer Organizations (POs) and Primary Agriculture Credit Societies (PACS) to operate as Multi Service Centres. As on 31 March 2018, cumulative grant of Rs 13.54 crore was disbursed to 224 POs and 2592 PACS.

B) SUPERVISORY FUNCTIONS

During 2017-18, NABARD conducted 346 inspections.

C) Developmental Functions

Kisan Credit Card Scheme for Farmers

The Kisan Credit Card (KCC) scheme was designed by NABARD in association with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in August 1998 for providing crop loans. NABARD has been at the forefront of technology revolution by helping rural financial institutions in providing RuPayKisan Cards (RKCs) to all their farmer clients. Due to NABARD's involvement in mission mode for issuance of RKCs, the number of Cooperative Banks onboarded for issuing RKCs increased from 47 as on 01 January 2017 to 350 as on 31 March 2018. RRBs and Cooperative Banks issued 1.14 crore and 1.76 crore RKCs respectively as on 31 March 2018.

Watershed Development

As on 31 March 2018, we have sanctioned 442 watershed projects, 123 KfW-Climate Proofing projects, 98 WDF-Climate Proofing projects, 452 Sustainable Development Plan programme and 24 springshed based watershed development programme in 27 states covering an area of 19.60 lakh ha.

Tribal Development

The Tribal Development Programme of NABARD is being implemented from the year 2003-04 with a corpus of Rs 50 crore. 712 projects have been sanctioned covering 5.21 lakh tribal families with a financial commitment of Rs 2121 crore, of which an amount of Rs 1462 crore has been disbursed as on 31 March 2018.

Climate Resilient Agriculture

Under Adaptation Fund, the cumulative sanction for six such ongoing projects stood at USD 9.85 million (Rs 5,911 crore). We have also cumulatively sanctioned 27 projects under NAFCC amounting to Rs 673.66 crore at the end of FY 2017-18. The cumulative disbursement stood at Rs 142.50 crore in respect of projects under both these Funds.

Umbrella Programme on Natural Resource Management

Cumulatively 334 UPNRM projects have been sanctioned across the country covering 10 major natural resource management sectors with a financial assistance of Rs 780 crore including grant assistance of Rs 42 crore

Financial Inclusion

As on 31 March 2018, the cumulative sanction under FIF was to the tune of Rs 3399.33 crore. We provided extensive grant support for holding over 1.60 lakh camps on “Going Digital” to promote digital banking and financial awareness.

Microfinance Sector

NABARD had launched the Self Help Group-Bank Linkage Programme (SHG-BLP) in 1992. Over 23 lakh SHGs were credit-linked during 2017-18 financial year. Some 10.19 lakh JLGs having around 50 lakh members belonging to small, marginal, landless and tenant farmers and artisans were financed during 2017-18.

EShakti

In a bid to digitise SHGs, project EShakti was launched on 15 March 2015. As on 31 March 2018, more than 3.75 lakh SHGs have been brought onto the EShakti platform. Over 3.8 million rural households across 54,600 villages are now set to avail the advantages of this digital transformation.

Skill Development

Promoting an entrepreneurial culture among the rural youth and encouraging them to start enterprises in the rural off-farm sector has been our strategy for over three decades. The capacity development measures initiated by NABARD have covered 32355 skill and entrepreneurship development programmes in association with our partner agencies with grant assistance of Rs 121.41 crore. These measures have cumulatively covered over 8.37 lakh unemployed rural youth in the country as on 31 March 2018.

Marketing Initiatives

For providing marketing opportunities to rural artisans and producers and have traditionally facilitated their participation in exhibitions across the country. In 2017-18, we enabled artisans to participate in 242 melas and exhibitions with financial assistance of Rs 4.04 crore.

Incubation Centres

To commercialise innovations and to shape agri entrepreneurship in the country, we extended support to Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar and Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Madurai for establishing Agri Incubation Centres with a total financial commitment of Rs 23.99 crore