Kumaraswamy announces farm loan waiver scheme of Rs 34,000 crore in first budget

BENGALURU: After much push on the proposed loan waiver scheme for farmers,H D Kumaraswamy, the chief minister of karnataka, made sure it is the responsibility of the state government to waive farm loans. On Thursday, Kumaraswamy announced a farm loan waiver of up to Rs 2 lakhs of farmers who have defaulted and Rs 25,000 for those who have running accounts.

In his first budgetary speech, he implied that the loan waiver is for the farmers who have taken loans from all nationalised and co-operative banks.

Though some conditions have been placed for the farmers to avail the loan waiver scheme. Like farmers those who have defaulted on payments to the banks up to December 31, 2017. And also all the officials of the co-operative sector and government officials, farmers who paid income tax for the past three years and “other ineligible” farm loan receiver will not come under this loan waiver scheme.

“However, even though the people of the state have not blessed a single party government, I have been provided with a good opportunity to form a coalition government and to work as the CM of thi coalition. In this background, I had discussions with the government officials, nationalised banks, officers of the co-operative sector and the farmers with regard to the crop loans of the farmers,” Kumaraswamy said.

He told that an inspection disclosed that incidents of loans exceeding 40 lakhs of large land holdings farmers. “In this background, as per the opinion of the farming community that it is not right to waiver higher value crop loan, I have decided to limit the loan amount to Rs 2 lakhs,” he added.
 
The entire loan waiver scheme will cost Rs 34,000 crore to the state government. But this loan waiver scheme will be executed in an orderly manner  with Rs 6,500 crore in 2018-19 budget.

“An additional allocation of Rs 4,000 crore has been made towards this,” he announced in his budget. He also added that prices of petrol and diesel  will be low compared to the neighbouring states, though a hike is observed.

An increase in taxes for consumption of electricity from the existing 6 per cent to 9 percent.The scheme will launched on November 1, 2018.