State Focus Paper: NABARD assesses a potential for credit flow of `31,971 cr in HP

The State Focus Paper will be a useful document for all stakeholders for making their plan and policies for increasing ground level credit in the state, officials said. The purpose of this exercise is to promote agricultural production increase and to create employment opportunities under farm and non-farm sector through credit support.

Rakesh Kanwar, Secretary, Agriculture, suggested that a framework for hand-holding of FPOs should be built to provide them compliance support and make them economically viable

The chief secretary talked about the low credit-deposit (CD) ratio due to risk averseness and lack of entrepreneurship skills in the rural youth. He also expressed confidence that there will be active and vibrant partnership of state government and NABARD for strengthening of women SHGs, working on tribal area development programmes, promoting rain-fed agriculture in the state by watershed management and various other initiatives.

For the uninitiated, the State Focus Paper is a document prepared by aggregating the credit potentials assessed at the district level to form State Credit Potentials. The focus paper guides the banks to prepare an annual credit plan and the state government to frame suitable policy guidelines and infrastructure plan for realising their potential envisaged.