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Agriculture highlights: amend the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules to ensure availability of drugs at reasonable prices and promote use of generic medicines. New rules for regulating medical devices will also be formulated. These rules will be internationally harmonized and attract investment into this sector. This will reduce the cost of such devices.
Farming and allied sectors get a bigger pie
Agriculture and Allied sectors will get about one lakh 87 thousand crore in the budget, 24 percent higher than the previous year. The Finance Minister said that the Government has proposed to increase the allocations for
Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana- National Rural Livelihood Mission for promotion of skill development and livelihood opportunities for people in rural areas to Rs 4,500 crore in 2017-18. The allocation for Prime Minister’ s Employment Generation Programme( PMEGP) and Credit Support Schemes has been increased more than 3 times.
The Finance Minister informed the members that the Swachh Bharat Mission( Gramin) has made tremendous progress in promoting safe sanitation and ending open defecation. Sanitation coverage in rural India has gone up from 42 percent in October 2014 to about 60 percent and such villages are now being given priority for
• Sowing farmers should feel secure against natural calamities.
• Sum of Rs 10 lakh crore is allocated as credit to farmers, with 60 days interest waiver.
• NABARD fund will be increased to Rs 40,000 crore.
• Government will set up mini labs in Krishi Vigyan Kendras for soil testing.
• A dedicated micro irrigation fund will be set up for NABARD with Rs 5,000 crore initial corpus.
• Irrigation corpus increased from Rs 20,000 crore to Rs 40,000 crore.
• Dairy processing infrastructure fund wlll be initially created with a corpus of Rs. 2000 crore.
• Issuance of soil cards has gained momentum.
• A model law on contract farming will be prepared and shared with the states.
piped water supply. He said, for imparting new skills to the people in the rural areas, mason training will be provided to 5 lakh persons by 2022, with an immediate target of training at
18 BioVoiceNews | February 2017