(a) whether the Government has created Agriculture Infrastructure and Credit Fund;
(b) if so, the objectives thereof;
(c) the jobs likely to be undertaken by the said agency and the monitoring agency appointed therefor;
(d) the manner in which the farmers are likely to be benefited therefrom; and
(e) the time by which the agency is likely to be ma de operative?
MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF FINANCE (SHRI S. S. PALANIMANICKAM)
(a), (b), (c), (d) & (e): The setting up of Agriculture Infrastructure and Credit Fund (AICF) was announced by the Government in January, 2004 and the Fund was operationalised by National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) on 17th February, 2004. With the operarionalisation of AICF, Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF) was closed. The objective of setting up of the Fund was to increase investment in agriculture and allied activities. Many of the activities originally covered under RIDF were retained in the new Fund and additional activities were also added. However, in the light of the representations received from Chief Ministers of various States, Govemineni; reviewed the matter and revived RIDF with some modifications in the activities to be covered on 8th Julv, 2004 and AICF was discontinued. RIDF-X has since been operationalised for the year 2004-05 with a corpus of Rs.8000 crores. Funds from RIDF will continue to be provided for projects relating to rural infrastructure development ir. various States. NABARD was nominated as a nodal agency for operationalising and monitoring the implementation of the AICF. With the revival of RIDF, NABARD will continue to monitor the implementation of the RIDF projects.