New Delhi: The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday approved the continuation of the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana and Restructured Weather-Based Crop Insurance Scheme until 2025-26.
Briefing the reporters here, Information and Broadcasting Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw informed about enhanced allocation with an overall outlay of Rs 69,515.71 crore from 2021-22 to 2025-26 to help in risk coverage of crops from non-preventable natural calamities. “The first Cabinet meeting of 2025 has been dedicated to the farmers by the Prime Minister. The decisions taken today are entirely focused on the welfare of farmers,” he said.
The Cabinet also approved extension of one-time special package on DAP (Di-Ammonium Phosphate) in addition to the existing subsidies to the producers for the period from 01.01.2025 to 31.12.2025 to ensure sustainable availability of DAP at affordable prices to farmers. “Budgetary requirement for the move will be Rs 3,850 crore (approximately). It will ensure that farmers will continue to get Di-ammonium Phosphate (DAP) fertiliser at Rs 1,350 per bag of 50 kg,” the Minister said.
India imports a significant portion of its DAP, which is a widely used chemical fertiliser essential for enhancing soil fertility and crop yield, from China, Morocco and Saudi Arabia.
Vaishanaw mentioned about the Cabinet’s decision to create Fund for Innovation and Technology (FIAT) with a corpus of Rs 824.77 crore for large-scale technology infusion in the implementation of the scheme, leading to increasing transparency and claim calculation and settlement.
The fund will be utilised towards funding technological initiatives under the scheme, YES-TECH, and WINDS as well as Research and Development studies, he added.
Nine states, including Odisha, are implementing YES-TECH, which uses Remote Sensing Technology for yield estimation with a minimum 30 per cent weightage to technology-based yield estimates. “Other States are also being on-boarded expeditiously. With the wider implementation of YES-TECH, Crop Cutting Experiments and related issues will be gradually phased out. Under YES-TECH Claim calculation and settlement has been done for 2023-24. Madhya Pradesh has adopted 100% technology-based yield estimation,” he added.
Vaishnaw further said weather Information and Network Data Systems (WINDS) envisages setting up Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) at the block level and Automatic Rain Gauges (ARGs) at the panchayat level.
WINDS, according to the official statement, envisages setting up Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) at the block level and Automatic Rain Gauges (ARGs) at the Panchayat level. Under WINDS, a 5 times increase in current network density is envisaged to develop hyper-local weather data.
“All efforts are made and will continue to be made to saturate all farmers of North Eastern States on priority. To this extent, the centre shares 90 per cent of premium subsidy with the North Eastern States. However, due to the scheme being voluntary and low gross cropped area in the North Eastern states, flexibility has been given to avoid surrender of funds and for reallocation in other development projects and schemes with fund requirements,” the Minister added.
