Sharad Pawar hails Budget 2011 as farmer-friendly

Terming the general budget as "farmer-friendly", Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar today said the government has fulfilled the long-cherished demand of farming community by lowering the interest rate on farm loan to 4% through subvention incentives.

Besides, he said the the Budget has focused on increasing production of vegetables, pulses, palm oil, fodder, millets besides protein food items like dairy, poultry, fish and meat in order to achieve food as well as nutritional security.

"The budget is farmer-friendly as it has many encouraging promises for the farm community," Pawar told PTI.

"I am happy to say that the amount for the crop loan has been raised from Rs86,000 crore during the first budget of UPA I to Rs4,75,000 crore now," he said.

"Besides, the rate of interest which was 11% initially has come down for those who regularly pay it to four per cent," he said, adding by doing so the UPA government has fullfilled the long-pending demand of the farming community.

Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee today announced cut in interest rate on farm loan by one per cent to four per cent for those farmers who pay on time.

Agri-credit traget has been raised to Rs4,75,000 crore in 2011-12 from Rs3,75,000 crore this fiscal.

Highlighting other positives from the budget, Pawar said "It is not just only credit, but substantial money has been provided for vegetables, pulses, research and other activities too.

"On equipments which is important for farming purposes, the duty on them has been substantially reduced".

Along with this, weightage has also been given to food parks and agro processing industries, Pawar, who also holds Food Processing portfolio, said.

Appreciating the strong social message in the budget, he said "the approach of the government is to remove the disparity between the urban and rural areas and to see that farm commodities produced in the countryside reaches the needy in urban areas at affordable rates".

"The government approach has been consistent and because of this finance minister has admitted in his speech that we have  chieved a growth rate of 5.4% against the targeted 4% in the farm sector," he added.