Haryana mulls pledge farming to reduce farmers' debt burden

Chandigarh, Sep 28 (UNI) Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda today expressed grave concern over the debt burden faced by the country's farmers and said his state was considering introduction of pledge financing, among other possibilities, to alleviate their plight.

Haryana had a very efficient food procurement system and was the second largest contributor to the Central Foodgrains Pool, the Chief Minister stated in his written speech, read by Education Minister Phool Chand Mullana at the Conclave of Chief Ministers on North Indian Common Economy, organised by PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry here today.

The state also ensured that there was no restrictions on inter-state movement of foodgrains, he said, adding that the government was committed to provide better marketing facilities to the farmers and promote agri-business.

Elaborating upon the strides taken by the state on economic front, Mr Hooda said in order to involve private sector towards this goal, contract farming has been introduced, investment of Rs 10,000 crore had already come to the State in the past 18 months, projects with investment of Rs 35,000 crore were under implementation, exports in the areas of IT and IT-enabled services had touched Rs 10,700 crore, which was 10 per cent of country's total export for this sector.

He said that Haryana has focused on industries like food processing to benefit its agricultural base on one hand and was promoting a huge petro chemical park with an investment of Rs 35,000 crore which will give employment to 50,000 persons near the Indian Oil Corporation Refinery in Panipat, on the other for all-round development in the state.

Mr Hooda shared the concern shown by the Chamber on the need to bring about efficiency and transparency in delivering public services through information and communication technology and hoped that Haryana would soon reach the top of the pyramid in the field.

''Apart from implementing key mission mode projects Haryana was at the advanced stage of implementing state-wide area network and was on stream for implementing the common citizen services centre,'' he said. The digitisation of land records, transport records, commercial taxes and treasuries were steps in this direction.

Pointing out that tourism was a major inter-state industry, he said that to promote this sector, Haryana had done away with luxury tax on hotels and guest houses and abolished permit and tax requirements for taxies coming from Delhi.

He, however, regretted that no consensus had been reached so far on the large variation in the passenger taxes between states in the northern region.

Stating that Haryana had removed physical barriers as far back as 1994, Mr Hooda said the state favoured hassle-free movements of goods and had advocated collection of taxes for all the states on the journey at the point of origin.

Other measures like increasing the validity of fitness certificate, a national permit for the whole country and taking road tax for an extended period would also be helpful in ensuring smooth flow of goods across the country as soon as a national consensus was evolved, he added.

Although, Mr Hooda was present in the inaugural session, he could not attend the session of Chief Ministers due to other important engagements.

UNI PS-JN VD DB1858