Punjab CM’s green initiative: State Cooperative Bank offers 80% subsidy on equipment for crop residue management

In consonance with the commitment of the Punjab Government, led by Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, to checking the menace of paddy straw burning, the State Cooperative Bank has launched a loan scheme related to crop residue management across the state.

Sharing details, the CM said the main aim of the scheme was to make rural credit easily available for farmers to purchase machinery for proper crop residue management in order to check the environmental pollution caused by paddy straw burning. He said the scheme had been introduced in the State Cooperative Bank, Chandigarh, and 802 branches of the district cooperative banks. Mann said the farmers could avail the benefits of this scheme through a simple and easy procedure.

The CM said the Primary Agriculture Cooperative Societies (PACs) in villages and other progressive farmers could avail themselves of the benefits of the scheme. He said the PACs or other entities could also benefit from 80 per cent subsidy on purchase of agriculture equipments under the Common Hiring Centre (CHC) scheme. Mann said the progressive farmers would be entitled for 50 per cent subsidy on purchase of agriculture implements for crop residue management such as balers and superseeders.

The CM envisioned that the scheme would go a long way in reducing environmental pollution caused due to paddy straw burning. Likewise, he also said the scheme would also be instrumental in encouraging the farmers to opt for the crop residue management. Mann reiterated the state government’s commitment to ensuring the welfare of the farmers by all possible means and urged the farmers to avail themselves of benefits of this scheme.

The CM said the major thrust was to reduce the amount of pollution generated when stubble was burnt and encourage more industry-farmer participation in the agri-residue supply chain to support bio-energy plants. He hoped that the initiative would help in avoiding this pollution through the establishment of an agri-residue biomass supply chain from the farmers to the bioenergy industry. He said power generation units, compressed biogas (CBG) plants and 2G ethanol factories could strengthen their feedstock supply chain and benefit the biofuel industry as a whole from this step. He said supply chain would be established through a cluster based approach in the vicinity of various industries utilising the paddy straw. Mann said the loan could be repaid within five years and in 10 half-yearly instalments between June 30 and January 31 annually.