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Chandigarh : In a bid to protect food grains from spoiling due to inadequate storage facilities, Punjab and Sind Bank has come up with an initiative to extend credit for the construction of rural godowns in Punjab.
The Punjab government is fully supporting this initiative and they have also got the green signal from the government of India. 'The bank will provide finance for construction of rural godowns of any storage capacity as per the requirement of the borrower. Individuals, farmers, companies, corporations, NGOs and agriculturists (single or in groups) can avail this loan facility,' said Adesh Partap Singh Kairon, Punjab agriculture minister, while addressing reporters here on Aug 20.
He added, 'Promoters will come up a piece of land and the bank will do 85 per cent construction funding, for a period of seven to ten years, at 10.5 per cent rate of interest. I personally feel that this rate is much higher but the bank officials have assured that gradually they will bring it down to 9.5 per cent.'
Kairon said that response from the promoters is very good and so far they have received 523 biddings for this scheme. In the last month floods, tens of thousands tonnes of food grains, in Punjab and Haryana, were damaged due to inadequate storage facilities in this region.
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