Agriculture Ministry couldn’t use, surrendered Rs 44,000 crore in 3 years

The Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, which comes under the Agriculture Ministry, surrendered Rs 44,015.81 crore of its budget during the last three years, as it could not fully utilise its allocation, according to a Parliamentary Standing Committee report tabled in Lok Sabha on Monday.. In its report on Demand for Grants (2023-24) of the Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, the Standing Committee on Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Food Processing, headed by P C Gaddigoudar, asked the government to avoid the practice of surrender of funds...

The Committee note from the reply of the Department that funds have been surrendered amounting to Rs 23,824.54 crore, Rs 429.22 crore and Rs 19,762.05 crore during 2020-21, 2021-22 and 2022-23 (tentative), respectively, the report stated..

The report also highlighted that the departments budgetary allocation as percentage to the total budget of the Centre has come down from 4.41% in 2020-21 to 2.57% in 2023-24...

The Committee notes that the Department has admitted in its replies that the proportion of Budgetary Allocations made in favour of the Department in terms of the percentage out of the total budget of the Government of India during the years 2020-21, 2021-22, 2022-23 and 2023-24 stood at 4.41%, 3.53% , 3.14 % and 2.57% respectively, the report said...

Taking into account the prominent role played by agriculture in rural livelihood, employment generation and food security of the country, the Committee recommend the Department to take up the issue of budgetary allocation in percentage terms out of Central Pool with the Ministry of Finance and ensure that trend is reversed from the next Budget onwards, it said...

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