The New Nation - Internet Edition

Shamim Jahangir

The Government, for the second time, is taking preparation to provide its proposed cash diesel subsidy of Tk 540 crore to farmers for Boro cultivation.

To this effect, the Ministry of Agriculture has already formed a high power committee to prepare a list of the farmers who are using diesel-powered irrigation pumps for Boro cultivation across the country.

"After completing the lists of farmers, the Ministry will be able to distribute the cash subsidy before the national election," a senior official of the Ministry said.

He said that the Government was trying to distribute the cash subsidy before the general election as the agriculturists had criticised the government for providing the subsidy during harvesting period of Boro last year.

The government is more aware about preparing a genuine farmers list, as it was surrounded by controversy over enlistment of fake farmers last year, he added.

The Caretaker government had, for the first time, introduced cash subsidy to the farmers using diesel-powered irrigation pumps as an incentive last year. An amount of Tk 250 crore had distributed among 65,93, 872 farmers having land holding of 45,63,000 acres across 484 upazilas last year.

In order to reduce the pressure of price increase of diesel, the government had proposed to allocate Tk 540 crore as cash subsidy in this fiscal year.

The government targeted 46.75 lakh hectares of land for the production of 1.80 crore tonnes of Boro paddy this year. Of the total target 1.31 lakh hectares were for the high yielding variety of paddy, 10 lakh hectares of hybrid variety and 1.25 hectares for local variety.

The Boro season began from October 24 and would continue till March 15, a senior official of the Agriculture Ministry said.