BHUBANESWAR: The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) has come forward to assist Odisha government in fisheries sector for the first time.

The bank, which has been assisting the State in agriculture and rural infrastructure development, has agreed to extend initial loan assistance of Rs 119.8 crore for development of six fishing harbour and fish landing centres.

The loan assistance will be made under the dedicated Fisheries and Aquaculture Infrastructure Development Fund (FIDF). The Centre has constituted FIDF and Animal Husbandry Infrastructure Development Fund (AHIDF) with a corpus of Rs 10,000 crore.

In a bid to help the State create fisheries infrastructure facilities both in marine and inland sectors and augment fish production, NABARD has inked a pact with the State government. Principal Secretary of Finance department Vishal Kumar Dev and CGM (Odisha region) C Udayabhaskar signed the MoU on Friday.

The FIDF envisages creation of fisheries infrastructure to achieve the target of 20 million tonne fish production by 2022-23 under the Blue Revolution. It also aims to achieve a sustainable growth of eight to nine per cent. Under the scheme, all scheduled banks are treated as nodal loaning entities (NLEs) for providing term loan assistance to private entrepreneurs/cooperatives respectively.

The projects under the FIDF will be eligible for loan up to 80 pc of the estimated/actual project cost. Beneficiaries will have to contribute at least 20 pc of the project cost as margin money. Entities will get an interest subvention up to three pc per annum for development of identified fisheries based infrastructure facilities.

Initially, it has been decided to develop Bahabalpur fishing harbour in Balasore district at a cost of Rs 47.66 crore, Chudamani fishing harbour in Bhadrak at Rs 42.18 crore, fish landing centre at Sorana and Kalupadaghat in Khurda at Rs 7.84 crore and Rs 6.42 crore respectively, fish landing centre at Kasia in Bhadrak at Rs 5.74 crore and a common fish pre-processing centre at Balaramgadi in Balasore at Rs 9.96 crore.

Support at hand

• NABARD will provide initial loan of Rs 119.8 crore for development of six fishing harbour and fish landing centres
• Projects under FIDF will be eligible for loan up to 80 pc of the estimated/actual project cost
• Beneficiaries will have to contribute at least 20 pc of the project cost as margin money