Budget 2017-18: Farm credit fixed at Rs10 lakh crore

The union finance minister Arun Jaitley said adequate credit would be made available to the farmers in time and the target for agricultural credit in 2017-18 has been fixed at a record level of Rs10 lakh crore.

With a better monsoon, agriculture is expected to grow at 4.1 per cent during 2016-17 as the total area sown under kharif and rabi seasons are higher than the previous year.

Special efforts will be taken to ensure adequate flow of credit to the under-serviced areas such as the the eastern states and Jammu & Kashmir. The farmers will also benefit from 60 days' interest waiver announced by the prime minister in respect of their loans from the cooperative credit structure.

Jaitley said about 40 per cent of the small and marginal farmers avails credit from the cooperative structure and the government is committed to support NABARD for computerisation and integration of all 63,000 functional primary agriculture credit societies with the core banking system of district central cooperative banks.

This will be done in three years at an estimated cost of Rs1,900 crore, with financial participation from the state governments to ensure seamless flow of credit to small and marginal farmers.

Elaborating on other pro-farmer measures, the minister said a long-term irrigation fund has already been set-up in NABARD and the prime minister has announced an addition of Rs20,000 crore to its corpus which will take the fund to Rs40,000 crore.

The coverage of Fasal Bima Yojana will be increased from 30 percent of cropped area in 2016-17 to 40 percent in 2017-18 and 50 percent in 2018-19. Jaitley said the budget provision of Rs.5,500 crore for this Yojana in budget estimates of 2016-17 was increased to Rs13,240 crore in the revised estimates to settle the arrears claims. For 2017-18, Rs9,000 crore will be provided and the sum insured under this Yojana has more than doubled from Rs69,000 crore in kharif 2015 to Rs1,41,625 crore in kharif 2016.

Referring to his last year's Budget speech, where the finance minister had focused on 'income security' of farmers to double their income in  five years, Jaitley said the government will take more steps and enable the farmers to increase their production and productivity and to deal with post-harvest challenges.

The coverage of National Agricultural Market (e-NAM) will be expanded from the current 250 markets to 585 APMCs. Moreover, assistance up to a ceiling of Rs75 lakh will be provided to every e-NAM market for establishment of cleaning, grading and packaging facilities.