Agriculture Infrastructure Fund (AIF)

Agriculture Infrastructure Fund (AIF)

Subject – Agriculture

Context – The central government, amid the pandemic has launched this fund.

Concept –

• AIF is aimed at strengthening and expanding the scope of Agricultural Produce Marketing Committees (APMCs) —where agricultural produce is traded and a congregation of commission agents, merchants or artiyas, and large buyers influence auctioning and price discovery.
• This scheme can provide support facilities to farmers and value chain actors for risk-sharing and market access.
• It is envisaged that the creation of storage and market infrastructure in a project mode through interest subvention of 3 per cent on collateral-free loan up to ₹2 crore for seven years may make (smaller) projects financially viable.
• Specific requirements like cluster identification or targeting State-specific APMCs and maintenance of sanitary and phytosanitary standards for organic produce marketing and exports are implicit in this scheme.
• The scheme further states that district, State or national level monitoring committees will be entrusted with keeping the turnaround time for file processing to less than 60 days.
• The approved projects for funding the beneficiaries are to be reflected in the Public Fund Management System and reasons for not funding the project need to be communicated to maintain visibility and transparency.
• In short, the AIF scheme targets the creation of adequate post-harvest infrastructure facilities to mitigate spatial and temporal risks in the agribusiness ecosystem.
• . This scheme is similar to the Agriculture Technology Infrastructure Fund (ATIF) rolled out in 2014–15 for ‘One Nation-One Market’, which resulted in 1,000-odd electronic National Agriculture Markets (eNAMs).
• Also, the AIF is likely to subsume the Private Entrepreneurs Guarantee (PEG) scheme launched in 2008–09, the Rural Godown scheme of 2001-02 and the grading and standardisation of agricultural commodities, among others, initiated as capital investment subsidy schemes.