Agricultural Credit Target To Be Increased To Rs 20 Lakh Crores: FM Sitharaman

In the Budget 2023, the Government has also planned to set up massive decentralised storage capacity to help farmers.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharama during her Budget 2023 speech announced an 'Agriculture Accelerator Fund' will be set up to encourage agri-startups by young entrepreneurs. Finance Minister Sitharaman said the agricultural credit target will be increased to Rs 20 lakh crores with a focus on animal husbandry, dairy and fisheries.

In the Budget 2023, the Government has also planned to set up massive decentralised storage capacity to help farmers. FM Nirmala Sitharaman also said, over the next 3 years, one crore farmers will get assistance to adopt natural farming. 10,000 bio input resource centres will also be set up, FM said in her budget speech.

For agricultural fertilisers, PM-PRANAM will be launched to incentivise states to promote alternative fertilisers.

Nirmala Sitharaman also announced in the Parliament that the Indian Institute of Millet Research will be supported as a centre of excellence. The announcement comes after the Government of India-sponsored proposal for International Year of Millets (IYM) 2023 was accepted by the UNGA. 

"The agri credit outlay and the digitisation of agri credit societies reiterate that credit access is key to economic growth. This is as true for agriculture as it is for industry and retail credit. Greater digitisation improves access to credit," Adhil Shetty, CEO of BankBazaar said after the Budget announcement.

Budget 2022 — Provisions And Allocations

Budget 2022-23 gave a provision of Rs 1.24 lakh crore for the implementation of various agricultural development and welfare schemes. Apart from that Rs 8,513.62 crore was allocated during Budget 2022-23 to the Department of Agricultural Research and Education.

As per the Budget 2022, Gross Value Added by the agriculture and allied sector was 18.8 per cent in FY21-22 and the agricultural activities recorded a growth rate of 3.9 per cent in FY21-22 (until January 31, 2022).

Some other salient highlights of the 2022 Budget was promoting chemical-free natural farming starting with farmers’ lands close to river Ganga. The Centre in its previous budget had talked about promoting post-harvest value addition, consumption and branding of millet products.

Sithraman's Budget 2022 also focused on the delivery of digital and hi-tech services to farmers via Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) mode. The usage of Kisan Drones and launching a fund with blended capital to finance agriculture startups were some of the focus areas talked about in the last Union Budget.