Funds provided in Budget for agri infra to promote growth: Sahney

New Delhi, Feb 2 (PTI) Funds provided by the government in the Budget 2021 for agri-infrastructure programmes would help promote the growth of the sector, Chair BRICS Agri Business Forum Vikramjit Sahney said on Tuesday.

Output marketing related measures like extending eNAM (National Agriculture Market) to 1,000 more mandis and making Agri Infrastructure Fund available for upgrading infrastructure in APMCs are welcome decisions, Sahney said.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday proposed a 10 per cent hike in the farm loan disbursal target to Rs 16.5 lakh crore, and introduced an agri infra and development cess of up to 100 per cent to create post-harvest infrastructure for improving farmers' income.

The minister has also extended the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund to APMCs for augmenting infrastructure facilities.

''The announcements made by the Finance Minister in the budget are indeed a welcome step. There is an emergent need to improve Agri infrastructure of mandis while also Preserving and processing agriculture output,'' he said.

He also said that more mandis needs to be integrated with National Agriculture Markets (e-NAMs) as it would bring more transparency and competitiveness in agriculture market place.

BRICS is a grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.