Kerala Government has asked NABARD for a loan of Rs 2,000 crore, not Rs 20,000 crore

A post is being shared widely on social media with a claim that the Kerala Government has asked NABARD (National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development) for a loan of Rs. 20,000 crore as they have declared Rs 20,000 crore special package to deal with COVID-19 outbreak. Let’s try to analyze the claim made in the post.

The archived version of the post can be found here.

Claim: Kerala has asked NABARD for a loan of Rs 20,000 crore to deal with COVID-19.
Fact: While it is true that the Kerala Government has announced a financial package of Rs. 20,000 crore to fight the pandemic, they have not asked NABARD for a loan of Rs 20,000 crore. They have requested for a special line of credit of Rs 2000 crore from NABARD under RIDF. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.

On the official Twitter handle of Kerala Chief Minister’s Office, it can be found that the Kerala Government has announced a special package of Rs. 20,000 crore to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kerala Govt's Special Package | #COVID19

20,000 Cr financial package to fight the pandemic.

✅ Loans worth 2000 Cr through Kudumbashree

✅ 2000 Cr for employment guarantee programme

✅ 2 months welfare pensions in advance

✅ 500 Cr health package
— CMO Kerala (@CMOKerala) March 19, 2020

In the post, ‘The News Minute’ article was given. So, when searched with the keywords, ‘The News Minute’ article related to the NABARD loan was found. While the title shows ’loan of Rs 20,000 crore’ in the Google search results, the article (when opened) shows ’loan of Rs 2,000 crore’. So, on looking at the cached version of the article, it was found that the title of the article was updated. The archived cache version of the original article can be found here. Also, Dhanya Rajendran (Editor-in-Chief of ‘The News Minute’) has tweeted that it was a typing mistake. So, the Kerala Government has not asked NABARD for a loan of Rs 20,000 crore.

Also, in the letter sent by Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan to Chairman of NABARD, it can be read that the Kerala Government has requested ‘a special line of credit of Rs. 2000 Crore under Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF) for Kerala State at 2 per cent per year, 190 bases points less than the prevailing 3.9 per cent per annum’.

To sum it up, the Kerala Government has asked NABARD for a loan of Rs 2,000 crore, not Rs 20,000 crore.

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