Bhubaneswar, Feb. 16: The agriculture budget for 2015-16 today proposed Rs 100 crore each for two major schemes - rooftop water harvesting to meet domestic needs and potato mission to achieve self-sufficiency through tuber production and procurement.
This year, however, Rs 7 crore has been allotted to create awareness among people to adopt rooftop water harvesting and ground water recharge practices to meet the domestic water needs. The scheme will continue till 2019.
On the other hand, Rs 100 crore allotted for the potato mission will be equally divided to ensure greater production and create a buffer stock across the state. The water harvesting scheme christened "rooftop rainwater harvesting and ground water re-charge in urban areas,'' will provide intensives to an extent of 50 per cent of the actual cost or maximum up to Rs 45,000 for each house in government and private sector to implement water harvesting structures.''
Initially the scheme will be implemented in Bhubaneswar, Berhampur, Jharsuguda, Balangir and Titlagarh and later it will be replicated across the state.
Last year's potato crisis did not escape finance minister Pradip Kumar Amat's attention as he created a budgetary provision to spend Rs 50 crore to make Odisha self-sufficient in it.
While the mission will try to increase the production of potato from 2 lakh tonnes to 12 lakh tonnes by 2017-18, the horticulture directorate will be the nodal agency for achieving the target.
With restriction in the movement of potato-laden trucks to Odisha from the neighbouring state affecting the consumers hard every year, the state government will create a buffer stock of potato through advance procurement to meet the shortage in supply and stabilise the price.
Amat proposed a revolving corpus fund of Rs 50 crore with the Odisha State Civil Supplies Corporation Limited through National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (Nafed).
The 2015-16 budget has an increased outlay of Rs 1,361.40 crore than the outlay in 2014-15. While agriculture outlay in the current budget is Rs 10,903.62 crore, last year it was Rs 9,542.22 crore. During 2013-14 the outlay was Rs 7,161.84 crore and in 2012-13 it was Rs 5,627.87 crore.
