The government will marshal about Rs 6,500 crore using Nabard?s rural infrastructure development fund (RIDF) to fund road development in India?s bucolic areas. The move to tap Nabard resources is a result of the government?s difficulty in finding adequate funds for flagship programme Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana.
Informing Lok Sabha of this planned move on Friday, rural development minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh said, ?Keeping in view the revised targets of the programme, all efforts are being made to mobilise adequate funds to meet the requirements. As a sequel to this, a special window has been created under the RIDF of Nabard for financing rural road projects under Bharat Nirman.?
Giving details of the increasing demand for funds from states, he said the Centre had increased allocation from Rs 1,900 crore for 2000-05 to Rs 11, 000 crore for 2007-08. ?The jump in the demand for funds could be realised because we could get states together to increase their absorption capacity,? he added. The minister?s statement has also outlined the assistance the Centre is seeking from multilateral funding agencies. Asian Development Bank and World Bank will give Rs 9,000 crore for the project.
The government has so far cleared 67,713 projects for construction of 2.38-lakh km of roads. By the end of July, 1.34-lakh Km had been constructed and work was on for 1.04-lakh Km, the Lok Sabha was informed.
Similarly, for rural housing under Bharat Nirman, the allocation for the current year has been increased to Rs 4,032.70 crore from Rs 2,907 crore in the last fiscal. The target for this year has been set at 2,1.27 lakh houses, of which 2.44 lakh have been constructed in the first quarter of the current fiscal. Funding under the scheme is shared by he Centre and states in a ratio of 75:25.
