AGRIC.CREDIT BIHAR

closed

The project would involve about 50,000 loans to individual farmers (mostly on farms from 1 to 5 ha) and groups of farmers for investment in about 47,000 diesel and electric powered tubewells and about 3,000 diesel pumpsets for low-lift pumping from surface water. Because of shortages and unreliability of supply of electric power it is likely that only about 3,000 (6 percent) of the tubewells would be electric powered; the rest would be diesel powered. An important feature of the investments to be financed under the proposed project would be the generation of potential water supplies in excess of the needs of many individual farmers whose holdings in most cases are fragmented. Those farmers would be expected to sell surplus water to neighbors; such arrangements are common in the project area and rates are well-established.