The Finance Minister noted that the agriculture sector is expected to grow at 4.1 per cent during the current fiscal on good monsoon. Sowing of both kharif and rabi crops has been higher.
Jaitley said the allocation for new crop insurance scheme ‘Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana’, which was launched last year, has been increased to Rs 13,240 crore this fiscal from budgeted Rs 5,500 crore. The allocation for the next fiscal has been earmarked at Rs 9,000 crore.
“The coverage of this scheme will be increased from 30 per cent of the cropped area in 2016-17 to 40 per cent in 2017-18 to 50 per cent in 2018-19,” he said.
The finance minister said that dedicated micro-irrigation fund will be created with a corpus of Rs 5000 crore.
