The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) on Tuesday announced a 24% growth in its balance sheet for FY21.
NABARD said its balance sheet grew to ₹6.57 lakh crore in FY21, compared with ₹5.32 lakh crore in FY20, an increase of 24%.
Loans and advances grew from ₹4.81 lakh crore to ₹6.03 lakh crore, an increase of 25%, in a year affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Borrowings increased to ₹3.17 lakh crore, from ₹2.06 lakh crore during the previous year.
“NABARD registered a total refinance disbursement of ₹2.23 lakh crore to support agriculture and rural development activities during the pandemic. This works out to a significant growth of 25% over the previous year,” said Dr G.R. Chintala, chairman, NABARD.
He said for FY22, NABARD had targeted to enhance the balance sheet to ₹7.5 lakh crore and would borrow to the tune of ₹3.7-₹3.9 lakh crore from the market to meet its funding needs.
Under Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan, NABARD disbursed ₹16,800 crore in FY21 to cooperative banks, ₹6,700 crore to RRBs, and ₹2,000 crore to NBFC-MFIs through a Special Liquidity Facility (SLF), he said.
It also provided additional SLF of ₹1,567 crore to NBFC-MFIs with an asset size of less than ₹500 crore to help the smaller players withstand the pandemic pressure, he said.
In a move to boost economic activities, a concessional bank refinance scheme to the tune of ₹5,000 crore was unveiled for lending to beneficiaries in the 2150 watershed development projects of NABARD. Further, a refinance facility of ₹500 crore was introduced to support the Government of India’s Water, Sanitisation and Hygiene (WASH) programme.
