Sana Kisan Bikas Bank to mobilise $1.5m

Sana Kisan Bikas Bank on Wednesday announced mobilising $1.5 million for the rehabilitation of small farmers in 14 districts that were badly affected by last year’s earthquakes. The credit is supported under the “Disaster Risk Reduction and Livelihood Restoration Project”, which was approved by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in October 2015. With $15 million grant funding by the Japan government, the project aims to accelerate reconstruction and livelihood restoration of the earthquake affected areas, with a focus on small and marginal farmers and landless households heavily affected by the disaster. It has three key activities, including rehabilitation and construction earthquake-resilient model schools, providing concessional livelihood restoration microcredit, and capacity building. Under the livelihood restoration programme, 12,500 farmers will be provided soft loan, while 2,400 farmers will be offered training for restarting their works. Kenichi Yokohama, ADB country director for Nepal, said the concessional microcredit programme has targeted reconstruction and livelihood of the earthquake affected poor farmers. The bank, in the first phase, will mobilise credit amounting to $5.5 million to small farmers in three districts—Dhading, Nuwakot and Rasuwa. On Wednesday, the bank handed over Rs190.1 million to 20 small farmers’ agriculture cooperatives in three districts. These cooperatives will lend to their 4,418 members. According to the government record, 331 small farmers in these districts lost their lives in the earthquakes. Similarly, 31,802 houses of the farmers were damaged, while more than 79,000 cattle died. Jalan Kumar Sharma, CEO of the bank, said the bank is disbursing the fund through 756 small farmer agriculture cooperatives in these districts. He said the bank will offer up to Rs50,000 to an individual and the interest rate will be 5 percent per annum.   Apart from the concessional loan, the bank will also carry out community-based capacity building programmes for restoration of earthquake affected farmers in rural areas of the 14 districts. Surya Prasad Acharya, joint-secretary of the Finance Ministry, said capacity building programmes will target developing entrepreneurships for self-help. “The government expects upliftment of the poor farmers by providing training in areas like plumbing, masonry, electricity-related works and vegetables and livestock farming,” he said. source: ekantipur