Announcing the maiden budget; CM Kumaraswamy approves Rs 34,000 Cr for farm loan waiver, prices of fuel hiked

Bengaluru, July 5: Raising expectations over the farmer’s loan waiver, Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy presented Rs 34,000 crore farm loan waiver scheme in the maiden budget of the Congress-JDS coalition government. The Karnataka CM said he has limited the loan amount to Rs 2 lakh, as it was "not right" to waiver higher value crop loan.

Announcing the decision on limiting the loan amount, the Karnataka Chief Minister said that the coalition government has the major responsibility of waiving farm loans and we have begun gathering the required funds for it. We have begun cutting down on unnecessary spending.

 

Holding the finance portfolio, CM Kumaraswamy said that to allow farmers to avail of new loans, the government will take action to issue clearance certificate by waiving the arrears from the defaulting account. "For this purpose, Rs 6,500 crore is earmarked in the 2018-19 budget," he said.

 

The chief minister said that the welfare schemes like Anna Bhagya (for free rice) and Ksheera Bhagya (meals for school students) introduced by the Siddaramaiah government will continue to stay in place and the current government will bring in more schemes. In view of the burden that the waiver scheme, Kumaraswamy also announced proposals to mop up additional resources, including an increase in the rate of tax on petrol by Rs 1.14 per liter and diesel by Rs 1.12 per liter. 

He also proposed a hike in the additional excise duty on Indian-made liquor by 4% across the board on all 18 slabs. The CM has also announced 247 new Indira canteens in the state - a decision which has been seen as the tactic to appease the Congress party.

 

Indira canteens are a chain of fast-food joints in Bengaluru, started, subsidized and run by Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP). The first Indira canteen at Jayanagar was launched by Rahul Gandhi on August 15, 2017. Each of these canteens is planned to serve 500 people per meal per day.

Besides this, it has been decided to credit the repaid loan amount or Rs 25,000, whichever is less, to each of the farmer's account, to help farmers who had repaid the loan within time, the chief minister said.

The families of the government officials and officials of the cooperative sector, farmers who have paid income-tax for the past three years and other ineligible farm loan recipients will be outside the purview of the loan waiver scheme.