Fulfilling one of its key poll promises the Yogi Government announced waiver of farm loan for the small and marginal farmers to the tune of over Rs 36,359 crore that would benefit more than 86 lakh small and marginal farmers. The government has also decided to bring `Kisan Rahat Bond’ to recoup the loss. The decision of the farm loan waiver was approved during the first cabinet meeting of the BJP government chaired by chief minister Yogi Adityanath here on Tuesday. The meeting which continued for over 2 hours took decision on nine issues with farm loan waiver being the major one.
There are around 2.15 crore small and marginal farmers, which is about 92.5 per cent of the total farming community which stand at 2.30 crore. “The Government has decided to waive all the outstanding crop loans due to small and marginal farmers as on March 31, 2017 taken till March 31, 2016 up to a maximum limit of Rs 1 lakh per farmer,” Government spokesman and Health Minister Sidharthnath Singh said while briefing reporters after cabinet meeting.
In addition, he said the state government will settle dues for all whose accounts have been declared Non Performing Assets (NPA) by the banks under one time settlement scheme. “The total financial burden would be Rs 36,359 crore of which Rs 5630 crore will go for one time settlement which will benefit 7 lakh farmer,” he said.
Singh said that the government would bring a legislation in the coming budget session of the state legislature to approve the loan waiver scheme. The government will also float Kisan Rahat Bond to raise the fund for the expenditure of this scheme, he said. Singh said that this scheme would be limited for only crop loan and would cover all the banks – be it cooperative or nationalized. The farmers who have taken crop loans for wheat, paddy along with purchase of pesticides and fertilizers would be eligible for the scheme.
“It was our commitment to the farmers that BJP government would waive of crop loans of small and marginal farmers. We have fulfilled that promise today,” he said. Singh said that all farmers with land holding less than one hectare or 2.5 acre would be considered as marginal farmers while farmers with land holding between one hectare and two hectares or between 2.5 acres and 5 acres would be considered as small farmers. The cabinet also set up an eight member committed under the chairmanship of chief secretary to prepare the crop loan waiver scheme. The other members of the committee are the Agriculture Production Commission (APC), Principal secretaries of finance and agriculture besides coordinator of state level bankers committee.
The committee would workout detailed modalites of formulations of crop loan waiver scheme after examining all the relevant aspects. The government would finalise the financing arrangements based on the recommendations of the committee. The committee would also oversee all aspects of implementation and monitoring of the scheme. The government spokesperson said that there have been successive droughts, floods and hailstorms in the last three years and the worst affected due to these have been the small and marginal farmers who are the most vulnerable to this weather. As these farmers are unable to pay the loan and they could fell in the trap of local moneylenders, hence the government announced the loan waiver scheme so that the growth rate in the agriculture sector do not have any impact, Singh claimed. The Gross State Domestic Product(GSDP) of UP in 2016-17 is estimated at 7.4 per cent while for agriculture and animal husbandry sector it is estimated at only 5.3 per cent. Similarly average per capita growth in income for the state between 2011-12 and 2014-15 was 3.2 per cent whereas for agriculture sector it was only 1.2 per cent.