Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
Chandigarh, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal urged the Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking his personal intervention for immediate financial restructuring of the outstanding loans of the financially ailing NAFED to bail out this apex organization of marketing cooperatives in India.
In a letter to Modi, the Chief Minister said that in the last few years, NAFED had borrowed funds from various public sector banks but with the passage of time, due to poor recovery, these bank loans turned into Non Performing Assets (NPAs) as the organization did not have funds to service these loans.
He bemoaned that as on date, total outstanding loans of the banks including interest stood at nearly whopping Rs 1,800 crores.
Giving brief details of this proposal, Badal said that it envisaged Rs. 590 crores interest free advance from the GoI and Rs. 450 crores Government Guarantee for raising loans from banks and NAFED’s own contribution of Rs. 59 crores to settle the bank loans of Rs. 1832 crores as on March 31, 2012 at 60% i.e. Rs. 1,099 crores.
The Chief Minister further said that although the above proposal for Financial Restructuring of NAFED was discussed in the expenditure Finance Committee (EFC) meeting in March 2013 under the Chairmanship of the then Secretary (Expenditure), yet there has been no progress thereafter.
Citing the unparalleled contribution made by the NAFED for ensuring the welfare of the farmers, Badal impressed upon the Prime Minister to intervene for ensuring financial restructuring of outstanding loans of the organization or advise the public sector banks to undertake ‘One Time Settlement’ with the NAFED so that the long standing hardship being faced by it could be taken care of.
