NABARD Mango Festival Begins In City

Bhubaneswar: The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) has organised a week long ‘Mango Festival-cum-Exhibition’ near its office premises here in IRC village.

The second edition of the mango festival was inaugurated by Governor of Odisha Prof Ganeshi Lal on Friday.

The state-level festival-cum-exhibition has been organised to provide an opportunity to the tribal farmers to exhibit and sell their farm produce and interact with senior government functionaries and bankers.

Popular varieties of garden fresh and carbide free mangoes such as Amrapali, Baiganpalli, Totapuri, Alphonso, Lengda, Dusheri, Sundari, Subarnarekha, Himsagar, Mallika, Neelam and other fruits such as Litchi, Pine apple, Jack fruit brought by farmers assisted under the WADI Development Programme of NABARD, are on display for sale.

Inaugurating the festival, Prof Ganeshi Lal complimented the NABARD for organising such an exhibition and sale of best varieties of mangoes and for supporting tribal farmers for selling to buyers at Bhubaneswar at a profitable price without the involvement of middlemen.

He also unveiled a pamphlet on Joint Liability Groups.

Chief General Manager of NABARD Dr KC Panigrahi said the NABARD has been providing grant assistance under its Tribal Development Programme.

NABARD, Odisha Regional Office is implementing 56 WADI projects in 19 tribal dominated districts of the state spread over 39,858 acres of the tribal land covering more than 46,817 tribal families, he informed.

It is expected that the festival will draw large number of visitors and they will get to buy best qualities of mangoes at a reasonable price, Panigrahi hoped.