Rs 16.5 Lakh Crore Agricultural Credit Target This Year: Finance Minister

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman today dedicated a significant part of Budget 2021 to announcements on agriculture, in the middle of a massive protest by farmers against three central laws that they believe will deprive them of Minimum Support Price (MSP). The MSP regime had gone through "sea change" to assure prices at least 1.5 times the production cost, with a sharp increase in procurement of foodgrain and payment to farmers, said the Finance Minister, adding, "The government is committed to the welfare of farmers."

The Finance Minister set the agricultural credit target for this year to 16.5 lakh crore. She also said 1,000 more mandis to be integrated to government's national digital agricultural trading platform "eNAM".

Farmers, said Nirmala Sitharaman, were paid Rs 75,100 crore on wheat in the form of Minimum Support Price in the last year. She also said over 43 lakh wheat growing farmers benefited from government procurement under MSP as against 35.57 lakh earlier.

The Agri infrastructure fund would be made available to Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMCs) to augment infrastructure facilities, she said. The Agri Infrastructure Fund has been increased to Rs 40,000 crore and Micro Irrigation Corpus doubled to Rs 10,000 crore.

Ms Sitharaman said the procurement of crops like paddy, wheat, pulses and cotton had jumped in the last six years. "The procurement has also continued to increase at a steady pace. This has resulted in increase in payment to farmers substantially," she said.

While the Finance Minister was speaking on agriculture, opposition members loudly demanded the repeal of three new laws enacted in September, which led to the protests outside Delhi by farmers, mostly from Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.

Farmers have been protesting through the bitter winter months on highways outside Delhi to demand the scrapping of three farm laws that they believe will take away their guaranteed minimum earning for crops and leave them vulnerable to big corporates. The government has refused to rollback the laws, saying these are part of long-planned reforms in agriculture.