Barasat, Mar 02: National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) has launched its District Rural Industries Project (Drip) in North-24 Parganas, being the fifth district in West Bengal, for development of rural non-farm sector giving stress on financing. Addressing the inaugural function here yesterday, Nabard’s chief general manager of eastern region Dr T R K Rao said that the project when implemented, would generate substantial employment opportunity, particularly in the cottage and small industries sector, while working with the thousands of self-help groups (SHG) and other entrepreneurs of the district. North 24-parganas is having atleast 13,000 SHG, besides six thousand small co-operatives under DRDA, who will be benefited from the Drip, he hoped.
While Nabard and other financial institutes and particularly the commercial banks were concerned about the existing credit-deposit ration due to non-recovery of loans from a large number borrowers and the financial institutions had already declared a large number of defaulters on the advice of the Centre, success of the Drip might be affected unless the state didn’t give stress on recovering the loans from the borrowers.