Centre Budget Vs Karnataka Budget: Eyes on farm sector ahead of Lok Sabha elections 2019?

Bengaluru, Jan 29: The BJP Government at the Centre and Congress-JDS coalition Government are going to present last Budget ahead of Lok Sabha elections in April-May 2019. Its is highly likely that both the governments will leave no stone unturned to win over farmers.

Interim finance minister Piyush Goyal will be presenting the budget on Feb 1 as Arun Jaitley is in the US on medical leave. Jaitley had hinted that the government could break with convention and make the 1 February exercise more significant than a vote-on-account.

"The convention has always been that the election year budget normally is an interim budget and ordinarily there should be no reason why we should move away from that convention. But then the larger interest of the economy always dictates what goes into the interim budget and that is something which cannot be discussed or disclosed at this stage," said a report quoting Jaitley.

Union Minister Radha Mohan Singh on Wednesday said the Budget will be dedicated to farmers in the country as part of the government efforts to double their income by 2022.
"It was a matter of pride that due to the implementation of various farm schemes, India has become among the leading economies in the agriculture sector," he said at a conference organised by the Crop Care Federation of India (CCFI) here on 'Government, Industry and Farmer can work together to make farming more profitable'.

While the budgetary outlay of the Agriculture Ministry was Rs. 1.21 lakh crore during 2009-2014 of the previous government, the current government had increased it to Rs. 2.11 crore during 2014-19, he said.

On the other hand, The Janata Dal (Secular)-Congress coalition government will present its second budget on February 8, a week after the Union Budget. This Budget is also is expected to be a pro-farmer one. The government is expected to waive the entire quantum of amount under the farm loan waiver scheme in one go instead of staggering it over the next four years as planned earlier.

In the last Budget, a farm loan waiver scheme of Rs 34,000 crore was announced. The loan waiver was be applicable to farmers with borrowings of up to two lakh rupees. The government will waive off all loans defaulted by farmers till December 31, 2017. For those farmers who repaid their loan within time, their accounts will be credited with the repaid loan amount or Rs 25,000, whichever is less.