Special fund set up to provide credit to food parks

The Central Government has created a special fund in NABARD with a corpus of Rs.2,000 crore to make available affordable credit to establish designated food parks and also for setting up of food/agro processing units in designated food parks by the private and public sector. The Ministry of Food Processing Industries has notified 142 designated food parks in different States in the country for the purpose of availing benefit of affordable credit from this fund. The rate of interest on term loans sanctioned from the said fund for the projects in the private sector is linked to the prime lending rate (PLR) of NABARD, which is presently at 9.25 per cent, plus the applicable risk premium. For State Government and State Government entities, it will be as decided by the Reserve Bank of India, which is presently prime lending rate minus 1.5 per cent.