• An all-time high total refinance disbursement stands at Rs 2.68 lakh crore for the fiscal
• Expands focus on technology interventions and climate change actions
• Operationalises an agro-ecological programme JIVA

Keeping abreast with its development financing agenda, the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) today announced its results for the financial year 2021-22. The apex development financial institution (DFI) posted an impeccable performance on major growth parameters surpassing the challenges posed by the post-pandemic fiscal.

While announcing the financial performance, Dr. G. R. Chintala, Chairman, NABARD stressed that the DFI enabled certain targeted growth strategies for the financial year.

Besides its varied functions, NABARD majorly focused on accelerating ground-level credit distribution, giving impetus to refinancing disbursements for core and government-led initiatives, boosting FPOs framework, aiding infrastructure development such as food processing, warehousing and agri-storage, funding agricultural start-ups, facilitating climate change mitigation & adaptation, pushing technology interventions, promoting off-farm programmes, supporting state projects by capital investment in rural infrastructure, enabling transformation of PACS, facilitating procurement by enhancing lending to the States, continuing financial inclusion for rural banking system, micro-financing to SHGs and strengthening its subsidiaries.

Financial Highlights

NABARD’s balance sheet has grown to Rs 7,57,246 crore in size for the FY 2021-22, compared to Rs 6,57,798 crore for FY 2020-21, registering a significant growth of 15.08%. Expanding the lending, the loan portfolio of the bank has increased to Rs 6,80,731 crore as on 31 March 2022 from Rs

6,03,000 crore as on 31 March 2021; registering growth of 12.89%. Total disbursement during the fiscal stood at Rs 3,77,086 crore; as against Rs 3,50,022 crore in the last fiscal, marking a growth of 7.73%.

Agriculture Credit

As per the Union Budget announcement, the Government of India had fixed Rs 16.50 lakh crore under the ground level credit (Agri & Allied) target for the year 2021-22. As against the same, during 2021-22, the achievement stood at Rs 17.09 lakh crore (104%).

Operational and Development Initiatives:

Refinancing

In a bid to support agriculture and rural development activities, NABARD 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. Long-term refinance disbursement reached an all-time high of Rs 1,16,000 crore; as against Rs 92,786 crore disbursed during FY 2020-21, marking growth of 25.02 % over the previous year. Similarly, the DFI reported an all-time high short-term disbursement with Rs 1,52,430 crore during 2021-22; as against Rs. 1,30,964 crore disbursed during 2020-21.

Augmenting Refinancing & Infusion of Liquidity

Supporting the financial institutions in the second and third wave of the pandemic, NABARD infused adequate liquidity by disbursing Rs 24,399.44 crore under Special Liquidity Facility – 2. NABARD disbursed concessional refinance of Rs 15,000 crore from the Long Term Rural Credit Fund to Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) and Cooperative Banks (CBs) for boosting capital formation in agriculture. Further, NABARD extended refinance support of Rs 8,820 crore to the NBFC sector and Rs 3,447 crore to the Small Finance Banks; in a bid to resolve the liquidity woes faced by the micro lenders.

Infrastructure Development

NABARD’s flagship programme Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF), which was 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 31 March 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 (Rs 34,830 crore during 2020-21) has been accorded during the current year as on 31 March 2022, noting a growth of over 32% over the previous year. The RIDF disbursements aggregated to Rs 33,883 crore as on 31 March 2022.

During the fiscal, disbursement under NABARD Infrastructure Development Assistance (NIDA) stood at Rs 7,136.26 crore whereas Credit Facility for Federations (CFF), Direct Refinance to Cooperatives (DRA), the Dairy Processing and Infrastructure Development Fund (DIDF) and Fisheries Aquaculture and Infrastructure Development Fund (FIDF) saw disbursements to the tune of Rs 46,434.31 crore, Rs 17,573.67 crore, Rs 118.66 crore and Rs 171.93 crore respectively.

With a view to establishing scientific food grain storage infrastructure, NABARD has been operating Warehouse Infrastructure Fund (WIF) with a corpus of Rs 10,000 crore. Under WIF, the development bank sanctioned 7594 projects with a cumulative sanction of Rs 9709 crore to create an agriculture storage capacity of 127.01 lakh MT across the country. Out of these, about 5,529 projects with 59.71 lakh MT capacity have been completed.

Development Initiatives

Strengthening FPOs

In line with the priority of GoI for promoting Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs), NABARD has been making all-out efforts to boost this segment. The bank has so far promoted 5136 FPOs including 1064 FPOs under a centrally sponsored scheme for formation and promotion of 10 thousand FPOs.

Further, in a bid encourage the institutional lenders to provide credit to FPOs, a Credit Guarantee Fund with a corpus of Rs 1,000 crore with equal contribution from NABARD and the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare has been set up under the trusteeship of NABSanrakshan Trustee Pvt. Ltd., a fully-owned subsidiary of NABARD. NABKISAN, the bank’s subsidiary and an FPO financing NBFC, cumulatively sanctioned Rs 444.02 crore to over 1,400 FPOs.

NABARD has also taken innovative steps to support the functioning of FPOs such as collaboration with GiZ for development of an auto-grading tool for FPOs (FPO Manak tool).

Launch of ‘JIVA’

This fiscal, NABARD launched India’s first unique agro-ecological programme called ‘JIVA’ to promote natural farming under its existing watershed and Wadi programmes in 11 States. The DFI is also engaging with value chain players to promote investments in agriculture value chain.

Support to PACS

NABARD has introduced a special refinance scheme for transformation of PACS as Multi-Service Centre (MSC) by overhauling their infrastructure. In order to achieve the vision of digitally equipped cooperative banking system, NABARD places significant importance of computerisation of PACS. The Union Budget for FY 2022-23 has made a budgetary provision of Rs 350 crore (total budget is of Rs 2,516 crore for five years) for computerisation of 63 thousand PACS. Notably, NABARD has earlier on-boarded State Cooperative Banks (StCBs) and District Central Cooperative Banks (DCCBs) onto CBS platform.

Recapitalisation of RRBs

GoI contributed Rs 4,084 crore towards recapitalization of RRBs for FY 2021-22. Out of this, Rs 3,197 crore has been released to 21 RRBs so far.

Micro Credit

On the micro credit front, 1.17 crore SHGs have been covered cumulatively by the banks under SHG-BLP. While bank loan disbursed to SHGs was Rs 71,000 crore in 2021-22, average loan disbursed per SHG stood at Rs 2.83 lakh in this financial year. Grant assistance released by NABARD for promotion and nurturing of SHGs stood at Rs 427 crore.

Climate Change Adaptation

NABARD has been undertaking several initiatives such as piloting net zero-ground water use in watersheds, development of simple tools for climate change vulnerability analysis, climate proofing of its natural resource management interventions under wadi/watershed plantations, installation of Automated Weather Stations, etc.

NABARD has been aiding a climate change adaptation programme titled ‘Integration of Watershed Development Strategies with Climate Change Adaptation for Rehabilitation of Degraded Soils’ (SEWOH), which is aimed at rehabilitation and regeneration of degraded soils in the areas vulnerable to climate change. NABARD is spearheading these projects in 103 completed watersheds across five states in India.

With a view to improving crop productivity, NABARD is also supporting “Soil Protection and Rehabilitation for Food Security in India” (Prosoil) project in five districts of Maharashtra and two districts of Madhya Pradesh. Similarly, NABARD has recently entered into a Technical Cooperation on “Capacity enhancement or Sustainable Agriculture and Sustainable Aquaculture”(C-SASA) project with GIZ.

Off-farm Development

During the year 2021-22, NABARD sanctioned 10 OFPOs while about 50 OFPOs are functional today covering over 16000 artisans and weavers across 23 states. Penetrating the Geographical Indications (GI) tag authorization, NABARD has, so far, undertaken the GI registration of 112 products. During FY 2021-22, NABARD has provided assistance for 40 products.

Subsidiaries

NABARD’s subsidiaries posted a stellar performance for the fiscal. NABFINS, a lending vertical, disbursed Rs 1270 crore NABARD Consultancy Services (NABCONS), a wholly-owned subsidiary of NABARD, expanded its footprint across India by providing consultancy in all spheres of agriculture, rural development and allied areas. NABFOUNDATION, another subsidiary of NABARD, kick-started ‘My Pad, My Right’ initiative in 32 districts. Accelerating investments into agri-tech start-ups, NABVENTURES, an alternative investment funds arm of NABARD, made investments of Rs 146 crore in nine start-ups and the fund has so far received additional capital commitments of Rs 411 crore. NABVENTURES concluded the fundraising process with a final corpus of around Rs 616 crore by 31 March 2022.