Odisha government asks OSAM board to drop non-starter warehouse projects

News

oi-Rahul Kumar

Bhubaneswar, June 22:
The state government has asked the Odisha State Agricultural Marketing (OSAM) board to drop all projects sanctioned under the Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF), but so far remain a non-starter.

The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) had sanctioned Rs 1,077 crore to the state in 2014-15 for the construction of 3,700 rural godowns with a combined storage space of 9.23 lakh tonnes. The proposed capacity of each warehouse was 5,000 tonnes.

Sources said an amount of Rs 183 crore was sanctioned for Warehouse Infrastructure Fund (WIF), which is a fund under RIDF. Which was specially created to develop warehouse capacity in rural areas. As many of the approved projects remained non-starters till 2020-21, a high powered committee of RIDF decided to drop them all in March 2021.

Droupadi Murmu: BJP can benefit in these 14 states including Gujarat by making presidential candidate

Under this, the Finance Department has asked to submit the list of projects to be closed of the Cooperative Department. OSAM Board, the nodal agency for execution of warehouse projects, was asked to deposit the sanctioned funds for those projects in the government account. The board deposited the accrued interest of Rs 29.50 crore in the government account on 30 March 2021 and the principal amount of Rs 19.30 crore on 5 July of the same year.