Karnataka - Udupi   

Farm sector will be made attractive for investors: Acharya

Udupi: The State government has allocated Rs. 18,000 crore for agricultural sector this financial year, Higher Education Minister V.S. Acharya said here on Saturday.

He was speaking at the inaugural function of “Janaspandana”, a mass contact programme, organised by the district administration.

Dr. Acharya said agricultural sector did not attract investments and hence the government wanted to increase the flow of funds and further encourage usage of technology, improve marketing, and provide food processing facilities. “To give a fillip to agriculture, we presented a separate budget for agriculture this year,” he said. It had 27 programmes for promoting agriculture. Agriculture was not confined to rural areas. Nearly 35 per cent of the people in Udupi City Municipality limits still depended on agriculture.

The government wanted to rejuvenate 10 lakh farmer families under the “Suvarna Bhoomi Yojane” scheme where a family holding two acres of land would be given financial assistance of Rs. 10,000 in two instalments through banks or co-operative societies. The government gave priority to maintenance and repair of tanks as this would give a fillip to agriculture. The water storage capacity of many tanks had decreased because of siltation and lack of rejuvenation for the past several decades.

Presiding over the function, MLA Raghupati Bhat lamented the poor response to the Janaspandana programme despite all district-level officers were attending it. “There are more people at Dr. Acharya's and my office than here, waiting to get their work done,” he said.

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