The Hindu Business Line : Farm sector moots revolving fund for oilseeds

FARM sector representatives have urged the Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, to create a Rs 500-crore revolving fund under the Food Corporation of India to facilitate expeditious payment of support prices to oilseeds and pulses growers.

The suggestion was mooted at a meeting held here on Tuesday by Mr Chidambaram with agriculturists and farm sector experts, as part of his pre-Budget consultation process.

The move, it was felt, would go a long way in encouraging farmers to diversify their cropping patterns from rice and wheat to commodities, which the country now has to import in large quantities.

At the meeting, a strong case was also made for making the recently announced National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme more universal and not confining it to the below poverty line families alone.

A self-selection scheme, involving the fixing of an appropriate wage rate, was seen as a better alternative to the one that has been put in place.

The meeting also dwelled on instituting a workable participatory price insurance scheme in place of the existing minimum support price system, which many experts said, tends to be market distorting.

The participants also sought the strengthening of the co-operative rural credit delivery system through appropriate restructuring and expansion of capital base, besides exempting marketing co-operatives from income tax.

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