Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday stressed on long-term investment in agriculture to meet food demands of the country in the future. Addressing the Board of Directors of National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, NABARD in New Delhi on Friday, Mr Jaitley emphasized the need to support rural housing.

He lauded the effort to allocate three thousand crore rupees through refinance. Mr Jaitley advised NABARD to continue to provide leadership in areas such as financial inclusion, farm credit to the small and marginal farmers, besides those farmers who do not have clear title deeds to the farms they plough.

The Finance Minister also launched two NABARD supported E-commerce portals- 'Ekraftindia' and ‘Shilpicraft’ to enable marketing of handicrafts and of products made by Self-Help Groups.

Mr Jaitley appreciated NABARD’s idea of district-centric approach for development of backward districts and its plan to pilot it in 10 backward districts to double the per capita rural credit in the next three years.