NEW DELHI Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday announced a new scheme, “PM Programme for Restoration, Awareness, Nourishment and Amelioration of Mother Earth” or PM-PRANAM to incentivise states and Union territories to promote alternative fertilisers and a balanced use of chemical fertilisers.
To cut down on chemical fertilisers, the finance minister in her Budget speech said that over the next three years, the government will facilitate 10 million farmers to adopt natural farming.
For this, 10,000 bio-input resource centres will be set up, creating a national-level distributed micro-fertiliser and pesticide manufacturing network, the Budget said.
The Centre’s fertiliser subsidy has been estimated at ₹1.75 lakh crore, down 22.2% from the revised estimates of 2022-23.
The Budget also announced 100 critical transport infrastructure projects for last- and first-mile connectivity for ports, coal, steel, fertiliser, and foodgrain sectors. They will be taken up on priority with an investment of ₹75,000 crore, including ₹15,000 crore from private sources.