Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman holds pre-Budget meetings with stakeholders

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday began her pre-Budget consultations with different stakeholders starting with those from agriculture and rural development sectors in which she stressed need for ways to ericate unemployment and poverty.

In her opening remarks, Sitharaman focused on possible measures to boost ecomic and social infrastructure of rural sector and ways to ericate unemployment and poverty through development of agriculture and allied sectors as well as n-farm sector, re a statement from ministry.

Sitharaman said that concerns of agriculture sector are high on priority of present government and stressed on representation of different regions of country so that ir specific needs relating to se sectors can also be considered.

She said that Finance Ministry will also hold bro-based consultations with different stakeholders from fisheries sector to bring about a blue revolution by optimally using country's maritime resources. Sitharaman also stressed need for encouraging start-ups which can remove segmentation in agriculture market and help in providing remunerative markets for agriculture products and supplying it to final consumers at reasonable prices.

main areas of discussion during meeting included agriculture research and extension services, rural development, n-farm sector, horticulture, food processing, animal husbandry, fisheries and start-ups in agricultural sector among ors, ded statement.

meeting was attended by among ors Anurag Thakur, Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs, Ramesh Chandra, Member, NITI Aayog, Subhash C Garg, Finance Secretary, Girish Chandra Murmu, Expenditure Secretary, Ajay Narayan Pandey, Revenue Secretary, Rajeev Kumar, Secretary, DFS, Sanjay Agarwal, and Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperation, Amarjeet Sinha.

or officers who attended meeting included Secretary, Department of Rural Development, Trilochan Mohapatra, Secretary, DARE, and Director General, Indian Council for Agri Research, KV Subramanian, Chief Ecomic visor, Tarun Shridhar, Secretary, F, Ministry of Agriculture, Rajni Sekhri Sibal, Secretary, Department of Fisheries, Pramod Chandra Mody, Chairperson, CBDT and or senior officials of Ministry of Finance.

During meeting, representatives of agricultural and rural development sectors submitted various suggestions to boost investment in agricultural sector and enhance market access to farmers. Suggestions were given to improve food processing sector and introduction of techlogy-intensive processes in n-farm sector, statement from ministry said.

It was also suggested that solar energy may be treated as third crop to augment income of farmers. Incentivising and popularising us of organic manure for improving carbon content in soil, resolving GST issues related to Farmers Producers Organisations (FPO), an incentive for agro-processing units in border districts and enhancing investments in research and development (R&D) in agriculture center.

Besides this, or suggestions that were me in meeting included filling up of vacancies in agricultural universities, increasing investment in micro-irrigation and solar pumps, financial incentives to states for implementing agricultural market reforms, promotion of handlooms and handicrafts in rth Eastern states for employment generation and enhancing rural income, creating of aggregators for farm equipment and promotion of n-IT related rural start-ups.

Representatives of different agriculture and rural development sector included Crispi Lobo, Managing Trustee, Watershed Organisation Trust, N Satya Narayan, Chief Executive, National Cooperative Union of India, AE Joseph, president, United Planters Association of South India, Baldev Singh Dhillon, Vice Chancellor, Punjab Agricultural University, Tushar Shah, Senior Fellow, International Water Manment Institute, and R Parthasarathy, Director, Gujarat Institute of Development Research also attended meeting.

Ors who also attended meeting included Ajay Vir Jakhar, Chairman, Bharat Krishak Samaj, Man Diwan, Social Ecomist, Usman Hassan, CEO, Universal Biotech, KP Vishwanatha, Vice Chancellor, Mahatma Phule Krishi Vidyapeeth, Harsh Kumar Bhanwala, Chairman, NABARD, Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, Confederation of Indian Industry, Ashwini Chhatre, Associate Professor, Public Policy, ISB, and Ramesh Chand, Member, NITI Aayog. 

Ministry of Finance also posted about same on Twitter; 

Subsequently, she also held a second meeting: