Farmers Movement Archive

Govt claims on AIF exaggerated, modifications insignificant: SKM

Bathinda: Sanyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM) has termed the approval of some modifications in the central sector scheme guidelines related to Agriculture Infrastructure Fund (AIF) as minor and insignificant.Union agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar on Thursday said in first meeting of the re-jigged union cabinet, modifications in the AIF were approved, allowing APMCs to access a financing facility under AIF and APMCs to use Rs 1 lakh crore fund.SKM said Rs 1 lakh crore AIF is highly misleading because there has been no allocation of even Rs 1000 crore from the government. It has merely created a new head under which loans can be accessed from banks. The actual financing is dependent on regular commercial banks, and India’s story of banking sector mismanagements and collusions with big capitalists is well-known. The government’s role is only to provide an interest subvention of a mere 3% and some credit guarantee coverage. Only Rs 208 crore had been allocated for AIF in the revised budget of 2020-21 and Rs 900 crore in the budget for 2021-22, it said. SKM said even in terms of loans, only Rs 3,241 crore were sanctioned from AIF as of March 2021 (Rs 4,300 crore as per some subsequent media reports), whereas the AIF was announced to be a Covid-19 rescue package as though it would immediately infuse Rs 1 lakh crore into agriculture. It said that when the Narendra Modi government stands by its “corporate” agriculture laws which undermine the whole legal framework of the APMC market yards with the aim of collapsing them, merely allowing APMCs to access some more loans is an empty gesture. When the farm laws were in operation before the Supreme Court suspended them, the trade in most APMC market yards collapsed by almost half and their revenues dropped drastically. The Centre has shown that it has no commitment to build and expand the public market and storage infrastructure for the benefit of small farmers and has set upon facilitating the corporates to build private markets, storage and processing facilities, SKM said.SKM said the AIF was in fact the precursor to the three legal reforms that the Central government had subsequently attempted. It was on May 15, 2020 that finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the AIF of Rs 1 lakh crore fund as part of Atmanirbhar Bharat package, and it is well worth noting that she announced it for aggregators and start-ups in the agriculture post-harvest infrastructure sector, including warehouses and cold chains. Finance minister’s announcement of AIF in May 2020 was accompanied by statements that indicated that three legal reforms were about to be brought in, which is a reference to the three “anti-farmer laws” that were brought in. It is well known that a favoured corporate house is the dominant in this sphere and has control of over one-third of India’s port volumes, the morcha claimed.

The Times of India

2021-07-10

Chandigarh