Union Home Minister Amit Shah who also holds the portfolio of Minister of Co-operation of India, on Saturday urged Agricultural and Rural Development Banks (ARDBs) to extend more long-terms loans to the agriculture sector, including for irrigation projects and other infrastructure.
“Cooperative banks should focus on providing loans for increasing the irrigated land in the country, he said. To overcome the challenges of small farm holdings, the minister asked cooperative banks to think how to operate such small farm fields with a cooperative spirit,” he said.
He further added, “India has 49.4 crore acres of agriculture land, highest in the world, after the US. If the entire farm land is irrigated, India can feed the whole world.”
Addressing a national conference, Shah said, “If we look back and look at the trend of the last 90 years of long-term financing through cooperatives and how it has percolated down, it is visible that it has not grown.” He also stated that there are many hurdles in long-term financing and time has come to overcome them with a cooperative spirit.
“Cooperative banks should not function as banks alone, but focus on other cooperative activities like setting up of agriculture infrastructure such as irrigation,” he added