“The Budget attempts to provide relief to the farmers as well as to push the growth of agricultural sector further,” said Dr R.S.Sidhu, Head, Department of Economics and Sociology at the university. Dr Sidhu said that the current agriculture year being a good year with foodgrain production estimated at 219 million tonnes, it would further ease pressure on rising food prices.

“Growing indebtedness among the farming sector in India has become a very serious crisis facing the nation. It is heartening to note that the Finance Minister has tried to address this problem,” expressed PAU economists.

The loans of the small farmers with less than 5-acre land holding, disbursed up to 31st March, 2007 and having become overdue on December 31, 2007 have been completely waived off. It is expected that this measure would provide relief to 30 million small farmers and the amount of relief is estimated to touch the figure of Rs 50,000 crore. Some partial relief has also been provided to another 10 million farmers with more than five- acre holding, in the form of one-time settlement of the loans which have become overdue.

“Though, it is very difficult to estimate the amount of relief which the Punjab farmers will avail, a quick claculation indicates it would come around Rs.1,000 crores,” said Dr Sidhu, adding that the recovery performance of industrial loans in Punjab was very high (around 85 %). “Therefore, only small proportion of total debt would be covered by the relief, “ said Dr Sidhu

The economists however said that additional allocation provided to enhance irrigation potential of the country was not going to benefit Punjab much. The budgetary allocation for irrigation has been increased to Rs 20,000 crores under which 24 major and medium irrigation projects and 753 minor irrigation projects would be completed.

“The benefits accruing to to the Punjab under this facility will be very small as 97% area of Punjab is already under irrigation,” they reasoned.

However provision of funds for the setting up of 500 soil-testing labortaries in the country and weather-based crop insurance would surely beneft Punjab. “These two steps are expected to benefit Punjab as the setting up of soil testing labs is expected to rationalise the use of fertilizers on the basis of soil test reports and weather-based crop insurance is expected to provide relief to the farmers from the adverse impact of climate changes on agriculture wheat and rice crops, especially wheat,” said Dr Sidhu.