The Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF) under the National Bank for Agricultural and Rural Development (NABARD) is set to play a bigger role in the implementation of mega projects with estimates of ?100 crore or more.

The Budget presented on Friday makes it clear that the focus on implementing small-scale projects under the NABARD-RIDF schemes have been creating many hurdles in the timely realisation of the projects.

The Budget proposes to consider mega projects which have high probability of commercial success and income assurance instead of small-scale projects. The Budget also critically reviews the reluctance of those who received funds in advance for small- scale projects to pay it back on time.

It was in the 1995-96 period that the NABARD-RIDF schemes were introduced to support small-scale projects. Since then, it had been following the pattern of implementing projects on a small-scale basis through various departments.