NE states fail to avail Central subsidies:Jairat

Itanagar, Sep 16 (UNI) Director of National Institute of Agriculture Marketing (NIAM) has said the north eastern states were not availing the central subsidies on agriculture and allied sectors properly.

Dr Jairat was speaking as a resource person at the one-day state level sensitisation programme on 'development and strengthening of agricultural marketing infrastructure,' organised by the National Institute of Agriculture Marketing, Jaipur, in collaboration with the state agriculture department yesterday.

He said rate of subsidy on capital cost of project for rest of the states in the country was 25 per cent of Rs 50 lakh per project, whereas it was 33 per cent or Rs 60 lakh per project for NE states.

Underscoring the importance of reforms needed at the domestic markets to capitalise on emerging market access opportunities in post WTO world, he said 'production driven' agriculture was being transformed to 'agri-business' and private sector needed to play a significant role to create policies and legal framworks required for market reforms.

Highlighting the importance of marketing infrastructure, Dr Jairat said it would reduce marketing costs, increase realisation of growers, have positive effect on income distribution that would enable access of small farmers to markets, and handle increasing large bundles of agriculture commodities.

Stressing the need to strengthen and modernise the existing agricultural markets in rural, periodic and tribal areas, he said these should be credit lined and subsidy backed and further urged close coordinaion and understanding between the banks and the promoters.

UNI UPB KK SS1225