Cabinet approves New Crop Insurance Scheme – Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana – A boost to the farming sector
The Union
Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi today has approved
the ‘Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana’ - a path breaking scheme for farmers’
welfare.
The highlights of this
scheme are as under:
i)
There
will be a uniform premium of only 2% to be paid by farmers for all Kharif crops
and 1.5% for all Rabi crops. In case of annual commercial and horticultural
crops, the premium to be paid by farmers will be only 5%. The premium rates to
be paid by farmers are very low and balance premium will be paid by the
Government to provide full insured amount to the farmers against crop loss on
account of natural calamities.
ii)
There
is no upper limit on Government subsidy. Even if balance premium is 90%, it
will be borne by the Government.
iii)
Earlier,
there was a provision of capping the premium rate which resulted in low claims
being paid to farmers. This capping was done to limit Government outgo on the
premium subsidy. This capping has now been removed and farmers will get claim
against full sum insured without any reduction.
iv)
The
use of technology will be encouraged to a great extent. Smart phones will be
used to capture and upload data of crop cutting to reduce the delays in claim
payment to farmers. Remote sensing will be used to reduce the number of crop
cutting experiments.
The
new Crop Insurance Scheme is in line with One Nation – One Scheme theme. It
incorporates the best features of all previous schemes and at the same time,
all previous shortcomings/weaknesses have been removed.
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