NABARD--National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development

NABARD is set up as an apex Development Bank with a mandate for facilitating credit flow for promotion and development of agriculture, small-scale industries, cottage and village industries, handicrafts and other rural crafts. It also has the mandate to support all other allied economic activities in rural areas, promote integrated and sustainable rural development and secure prosperity of rural areas. In discharging its role as a facilitator for rural prosperity NABARD is entrusted with
1.	Providing refinance to lending institutions in rural areas
2.	Bringing about or promoting institutional development and
3.	Evaluating, monitoring and inspecting the client banks
	Besides this pivotal role, NABARD also:
•	Acts as a coordinator in the operations of rural credit institutions
•	Extends assistance to the government, the Reserve Bank of India and other organizations in matters relating to rural development
•	Offers training and research facilities for banks, cooperatives and organizations working in the field of rural development
•	Helps the state governments in reaching their targets of providing assistance to eligible institutions in agriculture and rural development
	Acts as regulator for cooperative banks and RRBs
Some of the milestones in NABARD's activities are:
•	Refinance disbursement under ST-Agri & Others and MT-Conversion/ Liquidity support aggregated Rs.16952.83 crore during 2007-08.
•	Refinance disbursement under Investment Credit to commercial banks, state cooperative banks, state cooperative agriculture and rural development banks, RRBs and other eligible financial institutions during 2007-08 aggregated Rs.9046.27 crore.
•	Through the Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF) Rs.8034.93 crores were disbursed during 2007-08. With this, a cumulative amount of Rs.74073.41 crore has been sanctioned for 280227 projects as on 31 March 2008 covering irrigation, rural roads and bridges, health and education, soil conservation, drinking water schemes, flood protection, forest management etc.
•	Under Watershed Development Fund with a corpus of Rs.613.71 crore as on 31 March 2008, 416 projects in 94 districts of 14 states have benefited.
•	Farmers now enjoy hassle free access to credit and security through 714.68 lakh Kisan Credit Cards that have been issued through a vast rural banking network.
•	Under the Farmers' Club Programme, a total of 28226 clubs covering 61789 villages in 555 districts have been formed, helping farmers get access to credit, technology and extension services.