MPs urge Finance Minister to help resume flow of RBI funds to Nabard 

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Thiruvananthapuram

Several MPs, inclusing Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, CPI(M) Member of Rajya Sabha, have urged Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman to help resume setting apart a portion of Reserve Bank of India surplus funds to the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) as per sections 42, 43 of the Nabard Act and Section 46A of the RBI Act. 

Earlier last week, a team of the All-India Nabard Employees Association (AINBEA) comprising Rana Mitra, General Secretary; Chanderkant Srivastava, Secretary; K P Baburaj, Secretary; and V Rajesh, Treasurer, had met with Bhattacharya in New Delhi. It said RBI stopped chanelling ‘precious zero-cost’ resources to Nabard National Rural Credit( NRC) funds post-1993. RBI surplus have since been directed to the Centre for balancing its fiscal deficit ‘in violation of proviso in above-mentioned Acts.’

Huge RBI transfers to Centre

In FY 2024, transfers to the Centre amounted ₹2.11 lakh crore, Bhattacharya said in his letter to the Finance Minister. Setting apart a nominal 8-9 per cent would have translated into funds of ₹22,000 crore per annum to Nabard, which could have been utilised to reduce interest rate burden on farmers, especially small and marginal, through cooperatives and RRBs. He also called for waiving off Nabard’s income tax liability (nearly ₹2,000 in FY 24) and instead suggested setting up of a dedicated fund within Nabard to help bring down interest rates on farm loans. 

The team of AINBEA also met a host of MPs from different political parties and leaders to press for the above demands. They included Amra Ram, V Sivadasan and K Radhakrishnan [CPI(M)]; Dean Kuriakose (Congress); Dharmendra Yadav (SP); and Rampreet Mondal (JDU). All of them assured support for its demands ‘which are in the interests of Indian agriculture.’ The team also called on Harish Rawat, a former Union Minister, Chief Minister of Uttarakhand, and a former AINBEA president. It plans to approach other MPs, including from ruling dispensation, to highlight the contentious issues.