Finance Minister allocates Rs 1.52 lakh crore for agriculture and allied sectors

New Delhi: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday allocated Rs 1.52 lakh crore for agriculture and allied sectors. The finance minister announced this in the Union Budget.

It was announced that 109 new high-yielding and climate-tolerant varieties of 32 field and horticultural crops would be released for cultivation. Sitharaman also announced that 10,000 need-based bio-input resource centres would be set up and the Centre would assist them.

In the interim budget, the government has allocated Rs 1.27 lakh crore for the Agriculture Ministry for 2024-25, which is slightly higher than the amount in the current budget.

As per the budget document, the agriculture ministry has been allocated Rs 1,27,469.88 crore for the financial year 2024-25, of which the Department of Agriculture will get Rs 1,17,528.79 crore and Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE) Rs 9,941.09 crore. As per the revised estimates for the current fiscal, the Department of Agriculture has received Rs 1,16,788.96 crore and DARE Rs 9,876.60 crore.

In the interim budget presented on February 1, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that around 11.8 crore farmers have been provided financial assistance under the PM KISAN Yojana scheme.

Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) is one of the world’s largest Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) schemes. Under the PM-KISAN scheme, the government provides a financial benefit of Rs 6,000 per year in three equal four-monthly installments. The money is transferred to the bank accounts of farmer families across the country through DBT mode.

The scheme was announced in February 2019 in the interim budget and came into effect in December 2018. Sitharama, while presenting the interim budget, had said the expenditure on food subsidy has been pegged at Rs 2.05 lakh crore for 2024-25, down from Rs 2.12 lakh crore in the current fiscal.

She also noted that the government has estimated fertiliser subsidy for fiscal 2025 at Rs 1.64 lakh crore, down from Rs 1.89 lakh crore in the current fiscal.
Food subsidy is provided to cover the difference between the economic cost of food grains procured by the government and their sale at the PDS rate called Central Issue Price (CIP) under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) and other welfare schemes. Similarly, the Centre provides subsidy on fertilisers to producers.

The government fixes the MRP of urea sold in the market. The difference between the selling price and the cost of production is given as subsidy. Nutrient-based subsidy is also given on non-urea fertilizers like DAP and MOP.