Guidelines for Farmer Card ready for Cabinet to endorse
KATHMANDU, Nov 10:
The Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives (MoAC) has prepared a set of guidelines for the proposed Farmer Concession Card to provide agriculture inputs at subsidized prices to poor farmers having less than four hectares in Tarai and thirty ropanies in Himalayan and Hilly districts.
The guidelines envisage providing subsidy to the farmers on fertilizer, seeds and other agriculture inputs.
MoAC will send the guidelines to the Cabinet in a couple of days for endorsement. According to the source at MoAC, the Farmer Concession Card (Distribution and Utilization) Guidelines requires the farmers who intend to get the card to apply with citizenship card, land ownership certificate and recommendation of local bodies at the District Agriculture Development Office (DADO).
The card will be provided to the tenant (tiller) if both tenant and land owner are cultivating a particular land.
The source said that the card will be distributed in Parsa, Bara, Sunsari, Morang and Saptari districts in the first phase of the program. “However, we will take it to other districts if the system proves to be effective in the districts where it will be introduced initially,” said the source.
In the current fiscal year, the government has allocated Rs 3 billion for providing subsidy in fertilizers - both chemical and organic - and announced subsidy in seeds as well for the poor farmers.
MoAC has set a target to introduce the card within a couple of weeks in the targeted districts, which have been selected on the basis of demands for agriculture inputs, which are vital for farm production.
District Agriculture Development Officers will recommend the quantity of agriculture input to be provided to bonafide farmers. The card will have a record of the quantity of inputs issued to a particular farmer.
To discourage misuse of card, the guidelines have also envisaged cancellation of the card if any farmer is found to have submitted false documents or to have enjoyed concessions multiple times producing the same land ownership certificate in different places or abusing the card in other ways.
“As per the guidelines, the abuser of the card can´t get new card for next three years since the date of revocation of the earlier card,” said the source.
Similarly, it has been made mandatory for the distributors to keep a proper record of details about the sale of subsidized agriculture inputs and provide it to monitoring teams, if demanded.
The distributors have to submit the details of agriculture inputs and their buyers every month to DADOs, Agriculture Inputs Company (AIC), Seeds Company and Division Cooperatives Office, which are the agencies given the responsibility to properly supervise the distribution system and ensure that the facilities are not abused by distributors and farmers.
Likewise, MoAC, departments and regional directorates under the ministry and different levels of AIC offices are responsible for monitoring the distribution of subsidized inputs.
The DADOs, Agriculture Inputs Company (AIC), Seeds Company and Division Cooperatives Office have to review the effectiveness of the card system in a bid to minimize the risk of misuse of the cards.
Source: Republica
