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Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented her second Budget in a row on Saturday. She delivered one of the longest Budget speeches crossing 160 minutes (2 hours and 40 minutes) in duration. Before getting into announcing the allocations made for 2020-21, she laid out three prominent themes around the Budget – Aspirational India, economic development for all, and a caring society.
In her budget speech, the Finance Minister said that the government is committed to doubling farmers’ income by 2022. She said, “We have provided for 11 crore farmers through PM Kisan Beema Yojana. Provision of annual assistance to the farmer is made sure through PM Kisan yojana. Agricultural markets need to be opened and liberalised. Fisheries, animal husbandry and dairy needs to be provided for.”
- State governments to implement national laws such as Contract Farming, 2018, APMC, 2017 and Model Agriculture Land Leasing Act, 2016
- Comprehensive measures to be undertaken for 100 water-stressed districts; Provide stand-alone solar pumps to around 20 lakh farmers; Over 15 lakh farmers with barren lands will be allowed to solarise their farms
- PM Kusum scheme to remove dependency on kerosene and encourages use of solar power
- Govt will encourage balanced use of fertilisers
- A village storage scheme is proposed to be managed by SHEs. Women self-help groups can now get help from NABARD or Mudra
- Krishi UDAAN scheme will be launched by Aviation Ministry
- Horticulture sector with its current produce exceeds the production of food grains by around 311 million metric tons of production. The government will help those states that work for ‘one product, one district’
- Integrated Farming Systems to be developed in rain-fed areas
- Negotiable Warehousing Receipts Financing has crossed Rs 6,000 crore
- All beneficiaries of PM Kisan scheme will now be covered under the Kisan Credit Card (KCC) scheme
- MNREGA will be merged for creating fodder farms
- Fish production to be raised to 200 lakh tones by 2022-23
- Financing of negotiable warehousing receipts will be integrating other e-services
- Agricultural credit availability for 2021 has been set at 15 lakh crore
- Our govt aims to eliminate the foot and mouth disease in sheep and goat by 2025
- Doubling of milk production of 53.5 million metric tonne of milk to 103 metric million tonne by 2025
- Govt will involve youth in fishery sector. We hope the rural youth will work as Sagar Mitras and also form Fish Farmer Organisation
- Under Antodyaya scheme, SHEs will be further taken forward and made stronger
- Rs 2.83 lakh crore to be allocated for agriculture
- Rs 1.23 lakh crore to be allocated for rural development and Panchayati Raj
- Rs 35,600 crore will be provided for nutrition-related programmes
- Budget allocates Rs 22,000 crore for the Power and Renewable Energy Sector
- The Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure will be implemented from January 2021
