BENGALURU: After much hype surrounding the proposed loan waiver scheme for farmers, chief minister H D Kumaraswamy , as expected, ensured there is little burden on the state exchequer by way of waiving farm loans.

Accordingly, on Thursday, tabling his first budget, 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 maiden budgetary speech, Kumaraswamy hinted that the loan waiver will be for farmers who have taken loans from all nationalised and co-operative banks.

However, certain riders have been placed for the farmers to be eligible for the loan waiver scheme.

The CM in his budget has said the loan waiver will be in effect for only those farmers who have defaulted on payments to the banks up to December 31 2017.

Further, all government officials and officials of the co-operative sector, farmers who have paid income tax for the past three years and “other ineligible” farm loan recipients will be outside the purview of this loan waiver scheme.

Kumaraswamy admitted in his budget that he had resolved to waiver all types of crop loans of farmers taken for agricultural activities within 24 hours of formation of a full-fledged government of JD(S).

“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 this 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,” he said.

Kumaraswamy said that complete examination of the farmer’s crop loan waiving subject also revealed instances 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 said.

The CM announced that the loan waiver scheme will see a burden of Rs 34,000 crore on the state government, overall.

However, even this loan waiver will be done in a phased manner with Rs 6,500 crore being earmarked for the purpose in 2018-19 budget.

The CM said the previous Siddaramaiah regime loan waiver of Rs 8,165 crore for co-operative banks will be separately tackled and that Rs 4,165 crore has been already spent towards this.

“An additional allocation of Rs 4,000 crore has been made towards this,” he announced in his budget.

Meanwhile, in what seems to be an effort to mobilise additional funds for the populist schemes, the Kumaraswamy budget also saw an increase in taxation on the people.

The new budget proposes a “modest” increase of petrol and diesel prices by Rs 1.14 and Rs 1.12 respectively.

The CM justified that the prices of petrol and diesel, despite the hike, will still be less than those in neighbouring states.

The intent to generate more funds has also resulted in further hike of 4 per cent on Indian manufactured liquor (IML) and 50 per cent increase in private sector service vehicles, based on the square meter of floor area.

There will also be an increase in taxes for consumption of electricity from the existing 6 per cent to 9 per cent, with an increase on consumption of captive energy to be hiked from 10 paise per unit to 20 paise per unit.

On his other major budgetary promises, the budget did not see the mention of allowance of Rs 6,500 for senior citizens and a phased increase in the Rs 6,000 allowance for pregnant and lactating mothers. In the current year of 2018-19, the government will be providing Rs 1,000 under the new chief minister’s mathrapurna scheme.

The scheme will be launched on November 1 2018.

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