Union Finance Minister, Arun Jaitely on 10 July 2014 presented Union Budget 2014-15. The Budget 2014-15 was the maiden budget for the newly formed Government of NDA led by PM Narendra Modi.
The Union Government introduced many funds like Agri-tech Infrastructure Fund, National Adaptation Fund, Price Stabilization Fund to improve country’s Agricultural sector.
Highlights
• An amount of 100 crores rupees set aside for Agri-tech Infrastructure Fund.
• 200 crore provided to open Agriculture Universities in Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan and Horticulture Universities in Telangana and Haryana.
• A scheme to provide every farmer a soil health card in a Mission mode will be launched.
• 100 crore rupees has been provided for this purpose and additional 56 crores rupees to set up 100 Mobile Soil Testing Laboratories across the country.
• To meet the vagaries of climate change a National Adaptation Fund with an initial sum an amount of 100 crore rupees will be set up.
• A sustainable growth of 4 percent in Agriculture will be achieved.
• Technology driven second green revolution with focus on higher productivity and including Protein revolution will be area of major focus.
• To mitigate the risk of Price volatility in the agriculture produce, a sum of 500 crore rupees is provided for establishing a Price Stabilization Fund.
• Central Government to work closely with the State Governments to re-orient their respective Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Acts.
• Sum of 50 crores rupees provided for the development of indigenous cattle breeds and an equal amount for starting a blue revolution in inland fisheries.
• Transformation plan to invigorate the warehousing sector and significantly improve post-harvest lending to farmers.
Agriculture Credit
• To provide institutional finance to landless farmers, it is proposed to provide finance to 5 lakh joint farming groups of Bhoomi Heen Kisan through NABARD .
• A target of 8 lakh crore rupees has been set for agriculture credit during 2014-15.
• Corpus of Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF) raised by an additional 5000 crore rupee from the target given in the Interim Budget to 25000 crores rupees.
• Allocation of 5000 crore rupee provided for the Warehouse Infrastructure Fund.
• Long Term Rural Credit Fund to set up for the purpose of providing refinance support to Cooperative Banks and Regional Rural Banks with an initial corpus of 5000 crore rupees.
• Amount of 50000 crore rupees allocated for Short Term Cooperative Rural Credit.
• Sum of 200 crore rupees for NABARD’s Producers Development and Upliftment Corpus (PRODUCE) for building 2,000 producers organizations over the next two years.
Food Security
• Restructuring FCI, reducing transportation and distribution losses and efficacy of PDS to be taken up on priority.
• Government committed to provide wheat and rice at reasonable prices to the weaker sections of the society.
• Government when required will undertake open market sales to keep prices under control.
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