Amid growing farm distress due to two straight years of poor monsoon, the government today announced a major thrust for agriculture sector in the Budget by almost doubling allocation to Rs 44,485 crore and raising credit target to a record Rs 9 lakh crore.
Of the Budget allocation for the 2016-17, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has provided Rs 15,000 crore for interest subvention on farm credit, Rs 5,500 crore for crop insurance scheme, Rs 815 crore to promote dairy and allied sector and Rs 500 crore to boost pulses output.
To fund agri-initiatives, the government also imposed a Kisan Kalyan cess at 0.5 per cent on all taxable services from June.
As the government seeks to double farmers' income by 2022, Jaitley said soil health card will be provided to all 14 crore farmers by March 2017 and an unified e-agri market would be launched on April 14.
With the agriculture being a victim of vagaries of monsoon, the Finance Minister put a major emphasis on creating robust irrigation facilities and announced a plan to set up a a long-term irrigation fund with a corpus of Rs 20,000 crore.
"We are grateful to our farmers for being the backbone of the country's food security. We need to think beyond food security and give back to our farmers a sense of income security," Jaitley said in his Budget speech.
The Centre would reorient its intervention in farm and non-farm sectors to double farmers' income by 2022, he said.
Asserting that a special focus has been given to ensure adequate and timely flow of credit to farmers, the minister said: "Against the target of Rs 8.5 lakh crore in 2015-16, the target of agricultural credit in 2016-17 will be all-time high of Rs 9 lakh crore."
To reduce the burden of loan repayment on farmers, he said a provision of Rs 15,000 crore has been made in the budgetary estimate of 2016-17 towards interest subvention.
The allocation for interest subvention is now part of the Agriculture Ministry. Earlier, it was reflected in the Finance Ministry allocation, an official said, adding that the total budget of the Agri Ministry has risen sharply for 2016-17.
