Kerala budget writes off interest on small farm loans

Finance Minister K M Mani said Rs 50 crore had been set apart for the interest waiver scheme.

Written by: Reuters

1 min readThiruvananthapuramMar 15, 2013 01:02 PM IST

The Congress-led UDF government in Kerala today announced that the interest on loans taken by small scale farmers would be entirely written off and a scheme would be introduced to provide interest-free loans to them through co-operartive banks.

Presenting the budget for 2013-14 in the state assembly,Finance Minister K M Mani said Rs 50 crore had been set apart for the interest waiver scheme. A provision of Rs 30 crore would be made for the interest-free farm loans.

Mani,who belongs to the UDF’s third largest constituent Kerala Congress M which draws its support mainly from small and medium farmers in the Central Travancore region,also announced several other concessions for the agriculture sector.

They included exclusion of non-company holdings and estates from the purview of Agricultural Income Tax AIT,which,he said had already done in states like Karnataka.

Considering the growing demand for pollution-free vegetables and fruits,organic farming would be promoted with state support.

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