New Delhi: The rural infrastructure spending has been raised to Rs.140 billion ($3.5 billion) in the 2008-09 budget to support development projects in the rural areas.

In his fifth straight budget speech, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Friday said: "The Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF) is the main instrument to channalise bank funds for financing rural infrastructure, and it is quite popular among state governments. Therefore, I propose to raise the corpus of RIDF-XIV in 2008-09 to Rs.140 billion."

The budget also proposed to operate a separate window under RIDF for developing rural roads with a corpus of Rs.40 billion.

Besides, the government has proposed to create a Rs.12 billion fund in the National Housing Bank to enhance its re-finance operations in the rural housing sector.

Source : IANS