·
The Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (Prime
Minister's Crop Insurance Scheme) was launched by Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi on
18 February 2016.
·
The scheme aims to reduce the
premium rates to be paid by the farmers so as to enable more farmers avail
insurance cover against crop loss on account of natural calamities.
·
Under the new scheme, farmers
will have to pay a uniform premium of 2% for all kharif crops and 1.5% for all
rabi crops. For annual commercial and horticultural crops, farmers will have to
pay a premium of 5 %. The remaining share of the premium, as in previous
schemes, will continue to be borne equally by the Centre and the respective
state governments.
·
Under PMFBY, there
will no upper limit on government subsidy and even if balance premium is 90%, it
will be borne by the government.
·
Earlier, there was a provision
of capping the premium rate which resulted in low claims being paid to farmers.
This capping was done to limit government outgo on the premium subsidy. This
capping has now been removed and farmers will get claim against full sum
insured without any reduction.
·
Under the scheme, the use of
technology will be encouraged to a great extent. Smart phones will be used to
capture and upload data of crop cutting to reduce the delays in claim payment
to farmers. Remote sensing will be used to reduce the number of crop cutting
experiments.
·
The new Crop Insurance Scheme
will also seek to address a long standing demand of farmers and provide farm
level assessment for localised calamities including hailstorms, unseasonal
rains, landslides and inundation.
·
This scheme will act like a
“safety shield” for the farmers and will protect them against the vagaries of
nature.
·
The new Crop
Insurance Scheme is in line with One Nation – One Scheme theme.
·
With farmers having been
required to pay a premium share of as high as 15% in several areas in the
country, there has been a long-standing discussion on the need to bring down
these rates. The Centre’s move to bring down and cap these interest rates is
being viewed as a major government policy outreach towards the farmers.
· With the new scheme, the
Centre’s financial liability is estimated to go up to Rs 5,700 crore.
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