On Saturday, Cooperation Minister Amit Shah urged Agricultural and Rural Development Banks (ARDBs) to extend more long-term loans to the agriculture sector, including irrigation projects and other infrastructure.
Cooperative banks should focus on providing loans to increase the country’s irrigated land, he said.
To overcome the challenges of small farm holdings, the Minister asked cooperative banks to think about how to operate such small farm fields with a cooperative spirit.
He added that India has 49.4 crore acres of agricultural land, the highest after the U.S. If the entire farmland is irrigated, India can feed the whole world.
Addressing a national conference, Mr Shah said, “If we look back and see the last 90 years’ journey of long-term financing through cooperatives and how it has percolated down, if you see the data, it has not grown.”
He noted many hurdles in long-term financing; the time has come to overcome them with a cooperative spirit.
He also said cooperative banks should not function as banks alone but focus on other cooperative activities like setting up of a grid infrastructure such as irrigation.
