Sitharaman embellishes budget proposals for agri-stimulus

The finance minister embellished some of the budgetary announcements while coming up with a Covid-19 package for agricultural and allied sectors. Most announcements were intended at the medium to long-term development of agriculture and allied activities.

"Largely the announcement was like a policy document than an immediate solution. Many initiatives have been already mentioned in the budget. We will have to see the details to understand how much are part of the budgetary provisions and how much are new fund allocations,' said Siraj Chaudhry, MD & CEO, NCML.

Last budget had allocated a total of Rs 1.60 lakh crore for agriculture, irrigation and allied activities. As part of the stimulus, minister on Friday announced financing facility of Rs 1 lakh crore for funding agriculture infrastructure projects at farm-gate and aggregation points and this will be given to primary agricultural cooperative societies, Farmer

Producer Organisations, agriculture entrepreneurs and startups. The budget also had talked about Viability Gap Funding for setting up efficient warehouses at the block/taluk level, without allocating a certain amount for this.

Similarly, both stimulus and budget had announced the government's intend to grow fisheries export to Rs 1 lakh crore. While the budget did not specify the allocation, the stimulus allocated Rs 20,000 crore and expanded the scope of infrastructure development—Rs 11,000 crore for activities in marine, inland fisheries and aquaculture and Rs 9,000 crore for infrastructure like fishing harbours, cold chain, markets, etc. New fishing vessels, traceability and laboratory network also were added.

In order to promote horticulture, budget had proposed 'one product one district' wherein one district will focus on one horticulture product. This will take care of the marketing, branding and export of the product. This has been modified where now a region will focus on one product in 'cluster' approach.

Both the stimulus and the budget had emphasized on bee cultivation, while the stimulus made an allocation of Rs 500 crore. The stimulus package allocated an Animal Husbandry Infrastructure Development Fund of Rs 15,000 crore and Rs 4,000 crore for herbal cultivation.

"The stimulus package has newly announced Rs 10,000 crore for unorganised micro fund enterprises which need technical upgradation to attain FSSAI food standards, build brands and marketing," said Chaudhry.

There could be some overlap and these medium to long-term allocations will be made in a staggered manner, said Ajay Kakra, leader, food and agriculture, PwC India.