Mumbai, June 3: National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) will increase its credit to co-operative banks and regional rural banks by 11 per cent this fiscal. It will sanction credit limits of Rs 7,700 crore for co-operative banks and regional rural banks (RRBs) for their short-term operations this year as against Rs 6,992 crore in 1996-97.Nabard's business development plan envisages flow of refinance under investment credit to participating banks. This would be to the extent of Rs 3,716 crore, marking a marginal increase of Rs 193 crore over the previous year's figure of Rs 3,523 crore.

The apex agricultural bank plans to sanction loans to state governments under the Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF) this year. The fund has a corpus of Rs 2,500 crore. Although Nabard sanctioned loans around Rs 2,646.88 crore to state governments, actual disbursals were only Rs 292.36 crore. None of the north-eastern states were sanctioned any amount last year.

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