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Govt Has No Plan to Waive off Farmers Loans: Pranab

The government has clarified that it has no plan to waive off farmers’ loans in the face of poor monsoon and that any expenditure to allay the effects of drought would be within the budget target.

Needless to add, rainfall has been 29 per cent below average this year so far, leading to rising of food prices, hitting rural incomes and threatening to hurt economic growth.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said that he expected economy to grow at a rate more than 6 per cent in 2009-10, which would be the slowest pace of expansion in seven years.

Nevertheless, the government has not assessed the effect of scant rains on the economy and on the farmers as yet, and plan panel deputy chief Montek Singh Ahluwalia opined that growth projections could be trimmed due to the deficient rains.

It should be mentioned that following a rise in suicides of distressed farmers on failure of crop, the government spent close to Rs 700 billion ($14.4 billion) for waiving farm loans last year.

In response to a query if there is a plan for a fresh debt waiver scheme for farmers whose crops are likely to fail this year, Mukherjee told reporters after a conference: “There is no such proposals.”

Separately, Finance Secretary Ashok Chawla said that there was no need to borrow more than the record budget target of Rs 4.51 trillion ($93 billion) in the 2009/10, even after meeting expenses for drought relief.

“We don’t need to borrow more, we will get more by way of taxes,” he said.

“If necessary we will try to adjust from within the existing budget. Already direct taxes target has been raised.”

Chawla also said he did not see interest rates rising in the “foreseeable” future.

The comment helped 10-year federal bond yields ease to 7.12 per cent by 1026 GMT, off a near nine-month high of 7.16 per cent in intra-day trade.

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