World Bank’s Rs 1257 crore loan to Andhra Pradesh

The World Bank has signed a deal with the Indian government and the government of Andhra Pradesh to extend a Rs 1257 crore loan to make farming in the state a financially viable activity.

The scheme known as Andhra Pradesh Integrated Irrigation and Agriculture Transformation Project or APIIATP is said to benefit 2 lakh families of the poor and marginalized farmers, women, agro-entrepreneurs and other vulnerable groups.

APIIATP will be executed in rural areas that are mainly dependent upon rain-fed agriculture and help strengthen the flexibility of poor and marginalized farmers against unfavorable climate events via - improved access to irrigation, drought seed varieties along with post-harvest technology. These initiatives intend to improve soil health, water-use efficiency as well as crop productivity.

The scheme basically covers around 1000 small-scale community-based irrigation systems stretched over 90000 hectares of area in 1000 villages spread across 12 weather vulnerable regions of Andhra Pradesh.

Junaid Ahmad, World Bank’s Country Director in India said, “Strategic shifts are required for India to change its agriculture into a modern and elastic system, where rural poor, largely dependent on rain-fed agriculture, is able to use more climate-resilient agricultural technologies and save water, a scarce resource”.