Good news in budget for farmers: minister

Even as the government is scraping the bottom of every barrel to waive farmers’ loans, Cooperation Minister Bandeppa Kashempur said on Monday that he was confident that Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy would give farmers “good news” in his budget.

“We’ve had a detailed discussion and have taken opinions from the cooperative sector. I’m confident that there’ll be good news for farmers from both the cooperative sector and nationalised banks,” Kashempur told reporters.

According to the minister, the government will waive, in the first phase, only crop loans. In the cooperative sector, there are crop loans worth Rs 11,000 crore, he said. The previous Congress government had waived short-term loans Rs 8,165 crore farmers had borrowed from cooperative banks. “Of this, we have already released Rs 5,000 crore to the cooperative banks and another Rs 3,000 crore is pending. But we have asked the chief minister to waive all outstanding crop loans and he has responded positively.”