QUALITY & PRICE OF STRAW MANAGEMENT MACHINES FIXED AT NATIONAL LEVEL-PUNJAB GOVERNMENT

FARMERS SHOWING KEEN INTEREST TO BUY SUBSIDISED AGRI MACHINES CHANDIGARH, October 21, 2018: Punjab Government today categorically rejected as baseless and unfounded allegations of mismanagement in the purchase of machinery for in-situ management of crop residue and said that the whole process is being carried under the supervision of Central Govt. Task Force headed by Secretary Agriculture Government of India. Disclosing this here today, a spokesperson of Agriculture Department said that the quality standards and prices of agro-machines for managing Paddy Straw in the State of Punjab, Haryana U.P & Delhi, have been fixed by a task force at GOI level. The top functionaries of Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) and NITI Aayog besides representatives of all four states, are the members of committee constituted to formulate and monitor the roll out the scheme for paddy residue management and its time bound implementation. A spokesperson further said that the specification and pricing of machines has been fixed by technical teams consisting of representatives of Agricultural Universities of Punjab , Haryana , ICAR , Central Govt. machine Testing Centers and technical members from the States. The process to empanel manufacturers has been conducted directly by the Ministry of Agriculture, GOI after checking all test reports and other documents. Quality audits have also been conducted at the premises of manufacturers by Special Teams of GOI to check technical capability and manufacturing capacity of manufacturers. He said that the prices of equipment are, by and large, at par with the prices prevalent in last year, except for some increase that has occurred due to increased steel prices and mainly due to imposition of GST ranging from 12% to 28% on agriculture machinery by GOI, whereas there was almost no such tax on agri-machines in previous years. The State Govt. has sent requests to GOI to bring all the agricultural equipment or equipment exclusively for paddy straw management under 0 % GST slab or the minimum slab of 5%. There is bound to be difference in prices of the equipment meeting the quality standards fixed by the National Agro-Machinery Test Centres and approved by GOI and the machines having no standards and no registration. The spokesperson said that farmers of Punjab have shown keen interest in purchase of equipment either individually or through Groups. The state agriculture department had fixed a target to supply about 9000 machines to Individual farmers at a subsidy of 50 % , whereas the department received 16000 applications . Similarly state had decided to give such machines on 80% subsidy to 500 groups and Agriculture cooperative societies against which state received 1684 applications from Farmers Groups and 3547 Agriculture Co-op Societies. Further, it is mentioned here that, initially, only 40 manufacturers from Punjab were empanelled in the scheme at national level but in order to give wider choice to farmers for purchase of machines State Govt. approached GoI and got 165 more manufacturers, meeting the standards, from Punjab, empanelled under the scheme. The farmers can purchase machines from the empanelled manufacturers of Punjab or from outside the state. Already as against 24000 machines targeted to be supplied to farmers and farmer groups, about 19000 machines have been delivered and rest are being supplied. There has been tremendous response from farmers in favour of no stubble burning campaign, said the spokesperson.