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G. Chandrashekhar

MUMBAI, July 25

THE Calamity Relief Fund (CRF) will be extended to all farmers as part of the preliminary relief package announced by the Union Agriculture Minister, Mr Ajit Singh, following his meeting with representatives of a dozen drought-hit States.

What is this CRF? As per the recommendations of the Eleventh Finance Commission (EFC), two schemes namely CRF scheme and National Calamity Contingency Fund (NCCF) scheme are in force since 2000-01 and will run till 2004-05.

Both the funds are available for meeting the expenditure for providing immediate relief to the victims of natural disasters such as cyclone, drought, earthquake, fire, floods and hailstorm.

CRF consists of contribution from the Central and State Governments in the ratio of 3:1 respectively.

Expenditure on admissible items is incurred from this fund by the prescribed agencies under the State Governments.

CRF constitutes ready availability of funds with the State Governments to meet relief expenditure.

The total size of CRF for the five-year period ending 2004-05 is a little over Rs 11,000 crore.

States will receive their full Central share only on compliance with mandatory requirements laid down by the EFC.

NCCF is meant to assist States in the event of severe natural calamities where the expenditure on relief as per the prescribed norms cannot be accommodated within available balances in the CRF of the State concerned.

As per recommendations of EFC, NCCF was created with an initial corpus of Rs 500 crore financed from budgetary sources.

This corpus is to be replenished and built up through levy of a surcharge on certain Central taxes.

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