The State Government on Friday granted more relief to farmers by increasing the ceiling of the farm loan granted by nationalised and regional district banks from Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 1 lakh.
In another important decision, a meeting of the State Cabinet approved a wage hike for the nearly one lakh employees of the four road transport corporations apart from the employees of the Government-owned KIMCO, which is engaged in bus body building work.
While all the road transport corporation employees and KIMCO will receive a 10 per cent hike in wages with retrospective effect from January 1, 2012, those on fleet service duty, particularly drivers and conductors, will also be entitled for a 30 per cent hike in allowances. As per an understanding, the wages for the employees of the bus corporations are revised every four years.
Sources in the State government told The Hindu that Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar is expected to impress upon the Union government to direct nationalised banks to waive farm loans of up to Rs. 25,000, including interest, in the wake of the severe drought gripping parts of the State. As such, the State Government had announced the waiver of agricultural cooperative society loans up to Rs. 25,000 obtained by the farmers between August 1, 2011 and June 30 this year. This special package is expected to benefit 16 lakh farming families and the government will incur an expenditure of Rs. 3,500 crore .
Farmers here are entitled for a loan up to Rs. 50,000, extended by commercial and regional banks, at a subsidised interest rate of 3 per cent with the balance of the interest charges by the banks made over by the government. This loan limit has now been raised to Rs. 1 lakh, and as per the estimation of the government over two lakh farmers will stand to benefit.
Farm equipment
Briefing mediapersons after a meeting of the State Cabinet, Minister for Primary and Secondary Education Vishweshwara Hegde Kageri said the government would also promote the availability of mechanised farm equipment, including tractors and power tillers, at a reasonable rent to all the small and marginal farmers, more so, given the non-availability of farm labour in several regions of the State. Nearly 500 farm equipment centres to be run by the primary agricultural cooperative societies would be started across the State and each of them would be given a capital of Rs. 10 lakh to purchase the equipment.
It is said that of the nearly 75 lakh farmers in the State, around 75 per cent of them are with small land holdings. In the last budget, the Chief Minister had announced that farm equipment centres would be started across the State and the Union government too had evinced interest in providing financial support.
Other decisions
The other decisions of the Cabinet included purchase of 500 MW of electricity from the Gujarat Power Corporation between June 1, 2012 and June 15, 2013, at a cost of Rs. 4.70 a unit, modernisation of the Visvesvaraya canal (in Mysore and Mandya districts) at a cost of Rs. 940 crore (length of 45 km, including a 2.8-km tunnel) , introduction of satellite-based education in 60 industrial training institutes at a cost of Rs 7.6 crore and introduction of e-tenders (mandatory) for all government works and schemes costing over Rs. 5 lakh and starting a government company — Karnataka State Coal Mining Company Limited — as stipulated by the Union government to purchase coal for the thermal power projects in the State.
