Context

• Union Consumer Affairs, Food, and Public Distribution Minister Pralhad Joshi launched the ‘Credit Guarantee Scheme for e-NWR-Based Pledge Financing.’

Provisions of Scheme

• Farmers will be able to get a loan through their electronic negotiable warehouse receipt (e-NWR), which can be used as a guarantee against default to obtain low-interest loans from banks and other lending institutes
• Farmers, farmers’ producer organisations (FPOs), farm cooperatives, and MSMEs will be eligible under this scheme.

Total Corpus: Rs. 1000 Crores

• Coverage: Loans up to Rs. 75 lakhs for agricultural purpose and Loans up to Rs. 200 Lakhs for nonagricultural purpose.
• Eligible Institutions: All scheduled banks and all cooperative banks
• Eligible Borrowers: Small and Marginal Farmer (SMF)/ Women/SC/ST/PwD Farmers, other farmers, MSMEs, Traders, FPOs and Farmer cooperatives.

About WDRA

• The Warehousing Development and Regulatory Authority (WDRA) was constituted on 26 October 2010 under the Warehousing (Development and Regulation) Act, 2007.
• It is under the Department of Food and Public Distribution (DFPD).
• Mission: To establish a negotiable warehouse receipt system in the country.
• To make warehouse receipts a prime tool of trade and facilitate finance against it.

What are e-NWRs?

• E-NWR (electronic Negotiable Warehouse Receipt) is an instrument backed by Warehousing (Development and Regulation) Act, 2007 with negotiability for endorsement/transfer of title of goods.
• Negotiable Warehouse Receipt (NWR) is a warehouse receipt under which the goods represented therein are deliverable to the depositor or transferable to the endorsee which takes the goods title through the endorsement.

E-NWR is the electronic form of NWR.

• Warehouses registered with Warehousing Development and Regulatory Authority (WDRA) can issue e- NWRs against notified commodities deposited therein.
• From 1st August 2019, WDRA has made issuance of NWR mandatorily in electronic form only.