Andhra Pradesh encouraging farmer loans for economic recovery

With the economy being reopened in phases the attention is now shifting from the medical side of COVID-19 to the economic side. The concern all around the world has been to get the economy back on track and reverse or minimise the losses suffered during the pandemic.

For India, that hope has been pinned on the Agriculture sector which showed an admirable growth of 5.9 % even after the pandemic struck. The figures were the few positives from the data released by the government a month ago.

The latest attempt in this regard has been done by the Andhra Pradesh government which has announced that the Annual credit target for the state would be Rs. 2,51,600 crore out of which Rs.1,28,600 crore would be set for agriculture loans. The new amount is almost a 12% increase on the figures from the previous year. The farmers would have to submit documents to get zero-interest loans.

The state government also announced that apart from this they would also invest money in the establishment and maintenance of Godowns, storage facilities, food processing units to give the sector a much-needed boost.

The move is a large part of reforms both at the Union and State level which is aimed at transforming agriculture. The government has already amended the Essential Commodities Act and has brought new ordinances  that give more freedom to the farmers and will decrease the influence of APMC Mandis.

Other states have also followed suit in providing its farmers with lots of incentives to increase production while the Union government has also gone on to procure record amounts of food grains to avoid any shortage of food due to the pandemic.