Budget update: Stress on agricultural reforms

BANGALORE: In his budget speech, the finance minister, Yashwant Sinha, has

doled out a high intensive agricultural reform for the country.

This includes a allocation of Rs 775 crore from last year’s Rs 684 crore

for agricultural research and development. A number of scheme, sops, decontrol

and deregularisation are been proposed for the farmer.

He has also proposed to form a fast implementation program to give

electricity for the 80,000 villages in India, which has no access to

electricity. Agricultural export zones are also being promoted.

A corporation, is to be formed, to offer agricultural insurance policies to

the farmers in alliance with the existing private insurance companies.

The budget is being defined to meet the challenges to have a better economic

growth this year. The world economic growth has registered a growth of only 2.4

percent and inflation has dropped to 1.3 per cent as against 4.9 per cent last

year.

Industrial growth has dipped to almost half of last year’s growth

registering a growth of 2.3 per cent as against 5 per cent last year. A

disinvestment target of Rs 12,000 crore has been set.