Presenting the Union Budget for 2021-21 amid the ongoing farmers' protest, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that provision to agriculture infrastructure fund outlay will be increased to Rs 40,000 crore for Rs 30,000 crore, and micro-irrigation corpus will be doubled to Rs 10,000 crore.
She also proposed to increase the agriculture credit target to Rs 16.5 lakh crore. Presenting the Budget for 2021-22, she said the operation green scheme will cover 22 more perishable commodities while announcing the development of five major fishing hubs.
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Sitharaman further said 1,000 more mandis will be integrated with the electronic national market and the agriculture infrastructure fund would be made available to APMCs to augment infrastructure facilities.
Sharing the procurement data and amount paid to farmers under MSP operation, Sitharaman said: "In case of wheat, the total amount paid to farmers in 2013-14 was Rs 33,874 crore. In 2019-20, it was Rs 62,802 crore."
Budget 2021: FM Nirmala Sitharaman targets FY22 fiscal deficit at 6.8%, expands budget to provide stimulus
In 2020-21, she said the amount paid to farmers is over Rs 75,000 crore.
"The number of wheat growing farmers that were benefited increased in 2020-21 to 43.36 lakh compared to 35.57 lakh in 2019-20. That much of an increase within one year," the finance minister said.
For paddy, Sitharaman said the amount paid in 2013-14 was Rs 63,928 crore. In 2019-20, this increased to Rs 1,41,930 crore. Even better in 2020-21, the minister said this is further estimated to increase to Rs 1,72,752 crore.
Read: FM Nirmala Sitharaman opens government purse-strings to rebuild India
The number of paddy farmers benefitted increased from 1.2 crore in 2019-20 to 1.54 crore in 2020-21.
In pulses, Sitharaman said Rs 236 crore was paid to farmers in 2013-14. "In 2019-20, this was increased to Rs 8,285 crore. Now in 2020-21, it is at Rs 10,530 crore, more than 40 times increase from 2013-14."
Read: FM Sitharaman goes big on PSU privatisation, bank recapitalisation
Similarly, Rs 90 crore was paid in 2013-14 to cotton farmers while Rs 25,974 crore has been paid in 2020-21 as of January 27.
Meanwhile, the BSE benchmark Sensex rallied nearly 1,000 points led by gains in financial stocks in the afternoon session as Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Union Budget 2021-2022 in Parliament.
The 30-share Sensex was trading 929.54 points or 2.01 percent higher at 47,215.31, and the broader Nifty surged 260.05 points or 1.91 percent at 13,894.65.
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