Finance minister Arun Jaitley is likely to announce an Rs 5,000 crore fund for micro irrigation to help farmers irrigate farmland using fewer resources.
“Nabard will be asked to handle the corpus and pass on to farmers through regional rural banks and cooperatives,” a source said, adding this may be announced in the budget for 2017-18 on February 1.
There may not be a separate allocation, but Rs 5,000 crore can be earmarked only for micro irrigation projects from the existing corpus, the source said. Since Nabard gets funds from the Centre and also raises the financial resources by issuing bonds, there will not be any problem in creating a separate fund, he said.
With the creation of the fund, small farmers will be able to get bank loans easily to install drip and sprinkler irrigation, which is also part of agricultural credit. Drip irrigation helps save resources as water is directed to roots of plants through pipes. It also conforms to the government’s scheme of “per drop, more crop”, the source said.
Jaitley in his budget speech last year had announced creation of a dedicated long-term irrigation fund with Nabard with an initial corpus of Rs 20,000 crore.
Nabard got Rs 12,517 crore as budgetary support and market borrowings during 2016-17. But due to budgetary constraints the Centre decided to borrow its share from Nabard, which could be paid back in maximum 18 years. States are also allowed to borrow funds from Nabard for their own share.
The government has created a roadmap for completion of 99 identified irrigation projects under the prime minister krishi sinchai yojana and the accelerated irrigation benefits programme by 2019-20.
Total funds needed for all these projects have been estimated at Rs 77,595 crore, which will add 7.60 million hectares under irrigation. Out the 140 million hectares farmland, farmers over 50 per cent areas depend on rains to water their fields.
prabhudatta.m@mydigitalfc.com
“Nabard will be asked to handle the corpus and pass on to farmers through regional rural banks and cooperatives,” a source said, adding this may be announced in the budget for 2017-18 on February 1.
There may not be a separate allocation, but Rs 5,000 crore can be earmarked only for micro irrigation projects from the existing corpus, the source said. Since Nabard gets funds from the Centre and also raises the financial resources by issuing bonds, there will not be any problem in creating a separate fund, he said.
With the creation of the fund, small farmers will be able to get bank loans easily to install drip and sprinkler irrigation, which is also part of agricultural credit. Drip irrigation helps save resources as water is directed to roots of plants through pipes. It also conforms to the government’s scheme of “per drop, more crop”, the source said.
Jaitley in his budget speech last year had announced creation of a dedicated long-term irrigation fund with Nabard with an initial corpus of Rs 20,000 crore.
Nabard got Rs 12,517 crore as budgetary support and market borrowings during 2016-17. But due to budgetary constraints the Centre decided to borrow its share from Nabard, which could be paid back in maximum 18 years. States are also allowed to borrow funds from Nabard for their own share.
The government has created a roadmap for completion of 99 identified irrigation projects under the prime minister krishi sinchai yojana and the accelerated irrigation benefits programme by 2019-20.
Total funds needed for all these projects have been estimated at Rs 77,595 crore, which will add 7.60 million hectares under irrigation. Out the 140 million hectares farmland, farmers over 50 per cent areas depend on rains to water their fields.
prabhudatta.m@mydigitalfc.com
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