By Express News Service
BENGALURU: Farm loan waiver of upto Rs two lakhs was announced by Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy, in the budget, here on Thursday.
All defaulted crop loans of the farmers made upto 31-12-2017 in the first stage will be waived. "Apart from this, to help the farmers who repaid the loan within time, as an encouragement to the non-defaulting farmers, I have decided to credit the repaid loan amount of Rs 25,000 or whichever is less to each of the farmers account," he said.
"As per the opinion of the farming community that it is not right to waive higher value crop loan, I have decided to limit the loan amount to Rs 2 lakhs. Due to this crop loan waiver scheme, farmers will get the benefit of Rs 34,000 crore," the budget statement read.
Families of government officials and co-op bank officials, farmers who have paid income tax for the past three years and other ineligible loan recipients will be outside the purview of the waiver scheme.
In order to generate revenue for the massive loan waiver, the State has decided to increase excise duty on both fuel and alcohol, apart from the raise in road tax.
READ | Karnataka budget: Fuel, cars, alcohol to cost more
With the waiver scheme imposing a huge burden on the exchequer, he also announced proposals to mop up additional resources, including an increase in the rate of tax on petrol by Rs 1.14 per litre and diesel by Rs 1.12 per litre.
Kumaraswamy also proposed a hike in the additional excise duty on Indian-made liquor by 4 per cent across the board on all 18 slabs.
Kumaraswamy recalled his assurance to waive all types of crop loans of farmers taken for agricultural activities within 24 hours of formation of a full-fledged government.
"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 chief minister of that coalition," he said.
(with PTI inputs)
