'Rs 90,000 crore disbursed to farmers in last 5 years'

New Delhi, Jan 14: As the government's PM Fasal Bima Yojana has successfully completed 5 years, Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar interacted with stake-holders across the country via video conferencing. With the acheme providing financial asistance for the betterment of the farmers, he said that Rs 90,000 crore have been disbursed to the farmers in the last five years under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY).

 

 

 

The Minister also said that there is a need to raise awareness about the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana so that many more farmers can take advantage of the scheme. The scheme, which was launched as a major step to provide a comprehensive risk solution at the lowest uniform premium across the country for farmers, was approved in 2016.

 

Tomar said, “The scheme is a milestone crop insurance scheme covering full crop cycle against the losses occurring due to non-preventable natural risk. A total of Rs. 90,000 Crore have been paid as claims to farmers till now. In fact, the scheme was fully operational during the COVID-19 lockdown, distributing claims of over 8741.3 crores to 69.70 lakh farmers across India, which is highly commendable.”

 

The Agriculture Minister also congratulated the state governments, banks and insurance companies for successful implementation of the scheme throughout the country. He cited some notable examples of instances where the scheme was able to safeguard the interests of farmers, such as disbursements of claims during dry spell in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, hailstorms in Haryana and locust attack in Rajasthan in 2019.

 

The meeting was attended by over 150 representatives including officials of the state governments, banks and insurance companies. All the stakeholders discussed key features of the scheme such integration of land records with the PMFBY portal, Crop Insurance mobile-app, satellite imagery, remote-sensing technology for robust coverage around the country.

 

As an endeavour to constantly bring about improvements, the scheme was made voluntary for all farmers, post its revamp in February 2020. Over 5.5 crore farmer applications have been received on year on year basis, taking the count of total farmer applications to over 28 crores in the last 5 years.

 

On the occasion of completion of five years of the government's flagship crop insurance scheme, PM Narendra Modi said, "Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana is an important initiative to secure hardworking farmers from the vagaries of nature". Congratulating all beneficiaries of the scheme, the Prime Minister said that the scheme has increased coverage, mitigated risk and benefitted crores of farmers in the country.