Inaugurating the first ever Punjab Agriculture Summit, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Sunday stressed upon the need of separate budget for agriculture sector on the lines of Railway Budget to solve the problems pertaining to agriculture sector and farmers.
“Since over 55 per cent of the population is dependent on agriculture, there is an urgent need to address their problems and to make farming remunerative. In order to address the problems, I suggest that there should be separate budget for the agriculture sector,” he added.
Badal said: “The need of the hour is to completely overhaul the Centre’s policy in order to safeguard the interest of farmers.” He added that the plan allocation to agriculture sector should be enhanced to 10 per cent which has come down to 3.7 per cent, over the year, at present to give a fillip to this sector.
Holding the UPA-led Central Government guilty of ruining state’s farmers, he said that due to the exorbitant hike in agriculture inputs coupled with the non remunerative MSP, the peasantry of the state was on the verge of economic disaster.
He asked the Centre to implement agriculture scientist MS Swaminathan’s formula to ensure remunerative prices of their produce. He informed since agriculture is becoming non-remunerative, about one lakh farmers left farming in Punjab alone.
Besides taking other measures, he suggested that farmers should be given loan at low rate of interest including short term and long term to make farming remunerative.
“Short-term credit should be given to the farmer at four per cent, and two per cent to farmers owning one acre or less land, while long term finance for capital investment should be made available at six per cent,” he added. In order to promote diversification in Punjab, he added that the Centre must grant `5,000 crore for diversification in the State.