Interim Budget | Private Investments To Be Promoted In Post-Harvest Activities
Chennai: Boosting prospects of large corporates involved in agri and food retail, the interim budget proposes to promote private investment in post-harvest activities. The budget increased allocation for agriculture and allied activities by 2.5 per cent against the last budget and reduced it by 6 per cent against the revised budget while retaining MGNREGA allocation as per the revised budget.
“…Government will further promote private and public investment in post-harvest activities including aggregation, modern storage, efficient supply chains, primary and secondary processing and marketing and branding,” it said. This will help large companies procure food articles for their retail enterprises by investing in post-harvest activities.
Under Matsya Sampada Yojana aquaculture productivity will be enhanced from the existing 3 to 5 tons per hectare, doubling exports to Rs 1 lakh crore and generating 55 lakh employment opportunities in the near future. Five integrated aqua parks will be set up. However, the allocation for fisheries has been raised from a meagre Rs 562 crore to Rs 606 crore.
It will formulate a comprehensive programme for dairy farmers and control foot and mouth disease. However, the allocation for dairy has come down from Rs 849 crore in the previous budget estimate to Rs 787 crore. Hoping that after Nano Urea, increased application of Nano Diammonium Phosphate will bring down fertilizer subsidies, the nutrient-based subsidy scheme allocation has been brought down to Rs 45,000 crore from Rs 60,300 crore.
The budget aims at ‘atmanirbharta’ for oil seeds such as mustard, groundnut, sesame, soybean, and sunflower, through research for high-yielding varieties, widespread adoption of modern farming techniques, market linkages, procurement, value addition, and crop insurance.
The allocation for MGNREGA in a poll year has been retained at Rs 86,000 crore against the revised budget of last year.
