AgriMin 'sure' of utilising all PM Kisan Samman Nidhi funds

New Delhi: If all goes as per the plan, the 'efforts' of the Agriculture Ministry to utilize all the funds allocated for the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi would work well and all the remaining funds would be utilized by the last quarter of the financial year 2019-20.

As government has allocated Rs 75,000 crore for the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi and till the third quarter the ministry was yet to spend about Rs 25,000 crore of the amount.

The scheme was launched just ahead of the Lok Sabha elections and as per the political experts; the scheme had helped BJP in combating the rural distress. The initiative was launched by the Centre to provide upto Rs 6,000 yearly financial assistance to small and marginal farmers as minimum income support.

Talking to Millennium Post, a senior government official said, "The disbursement of the funds for the fourth quarter has started and by the end of the quarter, all the funds would be utilized by the states."

"As some more states have come on the board, so we are confident if utilizing all spent fund within the stipulated time," the official said.

The scheme was to cost the exchequer Rs 75,000 crore for the 2019-20 financial year. An allocation of Rs 20,000 crore was made retrospectively for the 2018-19 financial year in order to provide the first installment of the scheme for the period from December 2018 to March 2019. As per the reports, only Rs 8,000 crore of that 2018-19 allocation was spent.