Bhattarai, who chaired a meeting of Development Problem Resolution Committee at the Ministry of Agriculture Development (MoAD) on Monday, even pledged to gradually increase the scale of farm subsidies to enhance agri-production.[break]
“Western countries, too, provide huge farm subsidies, but exert pressure on us not to do so. This is not fair,” said the PM. “We are very clear that farm subsidy is highly necessary to improve competitiveness of our farmers,” he added.
Bhattarai urged the concerned officials to come up with a clear policy and mechanism to ensure that subsidy on farm inputs such as fertilizers and seeds reaches the targeted farmers, and does not go waste.
“It will not be rational to provide subsidy flatly to all farmers. Hence, the policy on subsidy should propose different level of subsidies to small and big farm holders,” Bhattarai said in his instruction to the senior government officials.
Keeping in view the poor performance of agriculture, he also urged the concerned officials to focus on improving production and productivity to support country´s food security, create employment opportunities and gradually substitute farm imports. He also urged Agriculture Development Bank (ADBL) to increase credit to farmers.
Stressing on the need to put ADBL under the MoAD, the PM also instructed the concerned officials to initiate a process to appoint representative from MoAD in the ADBL board so that the role of the bank on agriculture development could be increased.
Bhattarai stated that the agriculture budget should not be less than 5 percent of the total annual budget. For the last few years, average budget received by the MoAD has hovered around 3 percent of the total budget.
Deependra Bahadur Kshetry, vice chairman of the National Planning Commission, urged the MoAD officials to be equally serious toward properly utilizing the budget, besides demanding more fund.
Ganesh Raj Joshi, agriculture secretary, complained that the delay in approval of projects and appointment of consultants was mainly affecting the implementation of the agricultural projects.
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