Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday announced measures to give relief to the poor including migrant workers, farmers, street vendors and members of tribal community.
In a big move, the government extended the credit linked subsidy scheme (CLSS) till March 2021 for middle income group people (annual income of Rs 6-18 lakhs). 2.5 lakh people will benefit from this scheme. This will lead to investment of over Rs 70,000 crore in housing and will stimulate demand for steel, cement, transport and other construction materials.
FM announced Rs 2 lakh crore concessional credit boost for farmers through Credit Cards. This special drive will provide concessional credit to PM-KISAN beneficiaries. Fishermen and animal husbandry farmers will also be included in this drive. This will enable such farmers to gain access to institutional credit at concessional interest rate. 2.5 crore farmers will be covered.
FM also announced Rs 30,000 crore additional emergency working capital funding for farmers through NABARD inadequate financial resources with small and marginal farmers. Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) and Rural Cooperative banks are main source for credit. NABARD will extend additional refinance support of Rs 30,000 crore for crop loan requirement of Rural Co-op Banks & RRBs. This is over and above 90,000 crore to be provided by NABARD through the normal refinance route during this year. Front-loaded on-tap facility to 33 State Co-operative banks, 351 District Co-operative banks and 43 RRBs available on tap based on their lending. This will benefit around 3 crore farmers - mostly small and marginal fanners. This will meet post harvest (Rabi) & current Kharif requirement in May/June.
To create job opportunities for Tribals /Adivasis, plans worth Rs 6000 crore will be approved shortly under Compensatory Afforestation Management & Planning Authority (CAMPA) funds. The funds would be used by the state governments for afforestation and plantation works, forest management and forest protection.
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FM announced a Rs 5,000 crore special credit for all street vendors. The government will launch a special scheme within a month to facilitate easy access to credit to street vendors. An estimated 50 lakh street vendors will be able to avail the special credit facility and it will provide an initial working capital of up to Rs 10,000. Digital payments will be incentivized through monetary rewards and enhanced working capital credit would be made available for good repayment behaviour, FM said.
Further, the government announced 2% interest subvention for on loans up to Rs 50,000 given under MUDRA Shishu scheme for a period of 12 months. The total relief will be worth Rs 1,500 crore to Mudra Shishu loanees. The current portfolio of MUDRA-Shishu loans is 1.62 lakh crore (maximum loan amount of Rs 50,000).
Sitharaman announced affordable rental housing for migrants and urban poor, to be launched under PM Awas Yojana. With this, urban poor and migrants can look forward to having some basic accommodation for themselves. Affordable accommodation for migrants and urban poor will be provided through convertion of government housing in cities to affordable rental housing complexes (ARHC). The government will also incentivize industries along with state government and central government agencies/organisations to develop ARHC on their private land and operate.
FM announced that free food grains will be provided to migrants for the next two months and Rs 3,500 crore will be spent on this intervention. The state governments will be responsible for implementation, identification of migrants and full distribution.
As a part of the Prime Minister's technology driven system reforms, the government announced a 'one nation, one ration card' scheme. This scheme will enable a migrant beneficiary to access public distribution system (PDS) from any fair price shop in the country. National portability will cover 67 crore beneficiaries (or 83% of the PDS population) in 23 states by August this year and 100% national portability will be achieved by March 2020, FM added.
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