Jalandhar: Rajya Sabha member Vikramjit Singh Sahney on Friday urged the Centre to enhance the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund (AIF) interest-subvention project limit from Rs 2 crore to Rs 5 crore and to release Punjab’s long-pending Rural Development Fund (RDF).Sahney raised the issue of reduction and non-release of RDF and Market Development Fund (MDF) support to Punjab, noting that the levy linked to MSP procurement was cut from 6% to 2% in 2022, despite Punjab handling about 18 million tonnes of paddy and 12 million tonnes of wheat procurement annually—far higher than all the states. He emphasised that 64,724 km of rural link roads and 1,936 mandis in Punjab depended heavily on RDF and MDF resources, and he sought urgent Centre–State coordination to resolve the issue. Sahney also urged the finance minister to intervene and find a way out of this impasse on the RDF. He said the present AIF ceiling was inadequate for building modern cold storage and warehousing needed to curb post-harvest losses estimated by Nabard at Rs 1.5 lakh crore annually. Agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan welcomed the suggestion and assured that the request would be considered. MSID:: 128303709 413 |
