NABARD - Current Affairs Questions and Answers

ANSWER: e-Shakti

Explanation:
e-Shakti is a pilot project of National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) for digitisation of Self Help Groups (SHGs).

It was initiated to address certain concerns like improving the quality of book keeping of SHGs and to enable banks to take informed credit decisions about the group through a Management Information System (MIS).

The project covers 25 districts and 1,30,176 SHGs have been digitised as on 31st March, 2017.

As per information compiled by NABARD, about 69,696 SHGs of the SHGs which have been digitised are credit linked as on 31st July, 2017.

No SHG has been de-recognised on account of, or, after digitisation.

The digitisation project does not impact the profit/ loss position of the SHGs.

ANSWER: NABARD

Explanation:
The Telangana Government signed an MoU with NABARD here for a loan of Rs 874 crore to the Horticulture Development Corporation to cover 3.15 lakh acres under Micro Irrigation scheme for 2016-17 and 2017-18.

A Government release quoted Agriculture Secretary Parthasarathi as saying agriculture in the state is rain-fed and about 42.82 lakh acres depend on bore wells for irrigation.

Due to change in climatic conditions, the ground water level is decreasing and it is the need of the hour for the farmer to use micro irrigation.

Parthasarathi said the target for the year 2016-17 under the NABARD project is to cover 2.23 lakh acres allotted to all districts in the state.

NABARD: Know More

• Headquarters : Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
• Established: 12 July 1982
• Chairman: Dr. Harsh Kumar Bhanwala
• Currency: ₹ (Rupees)
• Website: www.nabard.org

ANSWER: INR 5000 crore

Explanation:
Nabard has hailed the increased focus on irrigation and dairy sectors in the Budget. This includes the hike in the corpus of long term irrigation fund by another INR 20,000 crore, taking the total fund size to INR 40,000 crore.

The FM also announced a dedicated micro irrigation fund which will be set up by NABARD to attain the goal, ‘per drop more crop’, with an initial corpus of INR 5,000 crore.

This will increase the area under irrigation and improve the efficiency of irrigation.

Improving irrigation efficiency is critical for agriculture since there is only 2.4 per cent of the world’s total geographical area and 16 per cent of the world’s population, yet only 4 per cent of the world’s total fresh water resources.

FM Jaitley setting up of a dairy processing and infrastructure development fund at NABARD with a corpus of INR 8,000 crore over three years. The fund will start with a corpus of INR 2,000 crore.

The dairy cooperative network includes:

• 254 cooperative milk processing units,
• 177 milk unions covering 346 districts and
• over 1,55,634 village-level societies.

About 15.1 million farmers have been brought under the ambit of village level dairy corporative societies up to March 2013.

Still, about 80 per cent of this milk is being collected and distributed by unorganised sector.

The budget said the government will provide support to NABARD for computerisation and integration of all 63,000 functional primary agriculture credit societies (PACS) with the core banking system of district central cooperative banks.

This will be accomplished in three years at an estimated cost of INR 1,900 crore, with financial participation from state governments.

ANSWER: Germany

Explanation:
National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development has collaborated with the German government for a special programme on Soil Protection and Rehabilitation for Food Security. A high level delegation from Economic Cooperation and Development Ministry of Germany signed the agreement.

• NABARD is anchoring 2 major programmes- soil conservation and rehabilitation of degraded land for food security in MP and Maharashtra and innovation of watershed development for rehabilitation of degraded soil and climate change adaptation in 5 states.
• Programme is part of the German government’s recently introduced special initiative One World, No Hunger on meeting the food security needs of countries.
• India is the only country chosen for this initiative.

ANSWER: NABARD

Explanation:
NABARD is the only NIE in the country, at present, for undertaking climate change projects. The Green Climate Fund (GCF) was set up under the framework of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2010 to help developing countries finance clean energy, other mitigation efforts and adaptation to climate change.

ANSWER: NABARD

Explanation:
The state - run National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, NABARD has set a target of providing 30,000 crore rupees as credit to farmers for irrigation over the next three years. This funding will be in addition to the government’s recent announcement of providing 50,000 crore rupees of loans to farmers over the next five years under the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana.