Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a management consulting firm, will soon begin consultations aimed at restructuring the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD).
Speaking to presspersons on the sidelines of the State Credit Seminar here on Wednesday, NABARD Chairman Umesh Chandra Sarangi said the restructuring task had been assigned to BCG.
BCG will prepare the restructuring plan for NABARD to make it a commercially viable entity.
He said NABARD was aiming at forming one lakh ‘joint liability groups’ of farmers, particularly small and marginal ones, in the next financial year. Under this initiative, the groups would be trained how to work and to access inputs and capital together from banks under joint liability.
NABARD has undergone a change from being a development finance institution to a development facilitating and financing institution. “We have our own model of development and we will raise resources internally to implement development projects,” he said. It has taken up watershed projects in 18 districts.
On the implementation of the Vaidyanathan Committee report on cooperatives, Mr. Sarangi said Rs. 7,400 crore had been disbursed for strengthening cooperatives. Twenty-five States had signed agreements and 13 States had amended the relevant legislation to make Primary Agricultural Cooperative Societies (PACS) financially viable. “We have already given training to 80,000 PACS employees and a common account system has been introduced,” he said.
