Telangana is set to get Rs. 7,000 crore central fund for completion of 11 pending irrigation projects in the state with the Centre signing a tripartite agreement with National Water Development Authority ( NWDA) and National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development ( NABARD) on Tuesday.
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Speaking at the signing ceremony of MoA between her ministry and NABARD under PMKSY in New Delhi today, the minister said 56 AIBP projects will cover nearly all drought prone districts of 18 states of country.
“All drought and suicide-prone districts will be first covered”, Union Minister of Water Resources (MoWR) Minister Uma Bharti told a press conference. She also emphasized that the Prime Minister himself is very keen that projects are completed as scheduled and appealed the various state govts.to garner resources from NABARD or their own budgets and clear other hurdles, if any, to speed up the execution. State water resources minister Girish Mahajan was present for this programme along with his counterparts from Chhattisgarh and Telangana Brijmohan Aggarwal and T Harish Rao respectively.
The state government will get ‘7,000 crore for completion of all the 11 irrigation projects under Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY).
The central government launched the Accelerated Irrigation Benefits Programme (AIBP) in the year 1996-97 to provide central assistance to major/medium irrigation projects in the country, with the objective to accelerate implementation of such projects which were beyond resource capability of the states or were in advanced stage of completion.
The PMKSY was launched in 2015-16 with an aim to enhancing access to water on farm land and expanding cultivable area under assured irrigation, improving farm water use efficiency and introducing sustainable water conservation practices etc. “This time there will be short-cut (sic) appraisals…and incentives will be given to States who complete their projects before time”. It’s a positive development for the water resources department.
Likely potential utilization through these projects is estimated to be 76.03 lakh hectare (Lakh ha).
Shashi Shekhar, Secretary, MoWR, RD & GR indicated that cost overrun and delays in irrigation projects has been a major concern and the innovative approach of time bound implementation and financing arrangement has been planned for completing the identified 99 projects within four years time (by December 2019). 23 projects (Priority-I) have been identified to be completed by 2016-17 and another 31 projects (Priority-II) have been identified to be completed by 2017-18. Balance of Rs. 8732.18 crore may be available through budgetary support. Corpus would be raised by way of budgetary resources and market borrowings to fund fast tracking of implementation of incomplete major & medium irrigation projects. Keeping in view of the Union government’s budgetary constraints, it was made a decision to borrow Central share/Assistance (CA) from Nabard as per year-wise requirements which could be paid back in 15 years keeping a grace period of three years.
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In 2012, the states where these 99 projects are located had signed a memorandum of understanding with the Centre which required the Centre to fund the total cost of the project with an assistance of additional 20% of the cost on account of cost escalation.
