Farm sector News

Sitharaman said the government is closely monitoring the evolving situation in the Russia-Ukraine region and assessing the impact of the conflict on the country`s trade. The Finance Minister pointed out that Ukraine is a major supplier of sunflower oil seeds and fertilizers and the disruption in supply would impact essential commodities like edible oil.

Criticising the recent Budget announcements of the Narendra Modi government, former union minister and senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha on Tuesday said that currently there is distress in rural India with farmers' income declining by 1.38 percent in the last four years.

Though Jaitley made his government's goal clear, there was little clarity on how to get there.

The farm sector is the spine of the Indian economy that provides employment to half of the total workforce in India and contributes a major chunk to the country's GDP.

Aiming to double farmers income by 2022, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley Monday announced an allocation of nearly Rs 36,000 crore for the farm sector while raising the agri-credit target to Rs 9 lakh crore for the next fiscal.

As China pulls out the stops to get more lending into its economy to bolster flagging growth, farming, a sector that employs almost a third of its 1.4 billion people, remains in desperate need of funding.

At a time when unaccounted wealth of Indians stashed away in foreign banks is under focus, the income tax department has shifted its attention from civil consequences to criminal consequences in serious cases of tax evasion.

The NDA government is according priority to the farm sector by allocating large funds for its growth and is no way promoting only the industry, Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh said Thursday.

India`s farm sector accounts for 14 percent of its nearly USD 2 trillion economy.