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Finance Minister’s announcement on augmenting the micro irrigation fund has brightened the prospects for extended irrigation coverage across one crore hectares in the country.
In her Budget speech, the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said, “The Micro Irrigation Fund, with a corpus of ₹5,000 crore has been created under NABARD, I propose to double it by augmenting it by another ₹5,000 crore.”
Reacting to the announcement, GR Chintala, Chairman, NABARD, said, “The Budget has accelerated sustainable agriculture sector’s growth by pegging an agriculture credit target of ₹ 16.5-lakh crore. It has focused on structural reforms for Atmanirbhar farmers. On the rural infrastructure front, the ₹ 40,000-crore allocation for Rural Infrastructure Development and the doubling of Micro Irrigation Fund to ₹10,000 crore will speed up on-going rural infrastructure projects.”
“The recapitalisation of ₹ 2,000 crore to NABARD and that of ₹ 1,200 crore to regional rural banks will help achieve the target of agriculture credit,” he said.
Welcoming the announcements, Randhir Chauhan, Managing Director, Netafim India and Senior Vice-President, Netafim Ltd, termed the Budget announcements as a step to modernise the agri sector.
“The announcement of additional allocation of ₹ 5,000 crore to the Micro Irrigation Fund (MIF) under NABARD is in line with the Government’s vision of “per drop more crop”, and will help move closer to the target of micro irrigation coverage across 1 crore ha in five years, across the country,” said Chauhan.
He, however, recommended the government to remove the condition of disbursement (which is only against additional subsidy) and consider to make it available for the mandatory state share as well.
The additional fund, according to him, could keep the momentum up in states like Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Karnataka which are already in favour of the scheme. It will also help restart in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and bring newer States like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, etc under its gamut, he said.
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