Doing away with a decade-old practice of presenting it on the last working day of February, Arun Jaitley presented the Union Budget 2017 on Wednesday.
Praising India’s farmers, Jaitley had previously said that the the govt’s approach in preparing the Budget 2017 is to spend more on rural areas, infrastructure & poverty alleviation with fiscal prudence.
Here’s what he announced for India’s farmers and rural sector:
- A whopping Rs 1 lakh crore hike in the credit target for the next fiscal to Rs 10 lakh crore as part of the government’s efforts to double farm incomes in the next five years
- Total allocation for rural, agricultural and allied sectors for 2017-18 is Rs 187223 cr, which is 24% higher than last year
- Allocation under MNREGA increased to 48,000 crore from from Rs 38,500 crore. This is highest ever allocation
- The government will take special efforts to ensure adequate credit flow to underserved areas — the eastern states and J&K
- Dedicated micro-irrigation fund to be set up by NABARD to achieve goal of ‘Per Drop More Crop’. Initial corpus will be Rs 5000 crore
- Allocation for new crop insurance scheme ‘Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana’, which was launched last year, has been increased to Rs 13,240 crore this fiscal from budgeted Rs 5,500 crore.
- Dairy processing infrastructure fund will be set up under NABARD, with fund of 8,000 crore
- The government provides short-term crop loans up to Rs 3 lakh at subsidised interest rate of 7 per cent per annum. An additional incentive of 3 per cent is provided to farmers for prompt repayment of loans within due date, making an effective interest rate for them at 4 per cent.
- Mini labs by qualified local entrepreneurs to be set up for soil testing in all 648 krishi vigyan kendras in the country
- Government will prepare a model law on contract farming which will be circulated to state governments