Anticipating that the Food Security Act may create a storage capacity shortfall for around 15 lakh tonne foodgrain, Nabard has kickstarted an ambitious project to build 10,000 warehouses at the panchayat level this fiscal, envisaging an investment of nearly `5,000 crore.
The proposed warehouses will be set up in association with primary cooperatives and the money is already provided for in the budget, said Nabard chairman Prakash Bakshi. “We are, on our own, trying to take up a very large initiative of creating warehouses with cooperatives at panchayats. We have planned to set up 10,000 such warehouses this year,” he said during a recent interaction, adding that around 300 such warehouses have already been put up. On whether the target is too ambitious, Mr Bakshi conceded that probably it was, and that they may fall short of their target. However, whatever it achieves this fiscal will help it scale up to 20,000 such units by end of next fiscal.
Speaking on the need for such facilities, especially in light of the passage of the landmark Food Security Act, Mr Bakshi said, “A lot of warehousing space is required and at least 15 lakh tonne capacity should be created immediately to meet the additional requirement.” On the investment side, Mr Bakshi said the budget has already earmarked `5,000 crore towards creation of warehousing facilities, which will be used for this project. Just like the Rural Infrastructure Development Fund, this money is also drawn from commercial banks’ shortfall in priority sector lending targets, he explained.