Centre likely to grant more funds for rural schemes to ease pain

Image for representation purpose only.

Image for representation purpose only.
| Photo Credit: Ramesh Sharma

The Central Government will likely raise its allocation to the Rural Development Ministry by 18% to ₹1.60 trillion ($14.19 billion) for the current fiscal year, partly to bolster its job scheme, a top government source told Reuters.

India had allocated ₹1.36 trillion for 2022/23 for various schemes in the hinterland, but the stress in rural areas has led to increased demand for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, or MNREGA, the country’s only minimum job guarantee scheme, which pays $2 to $3 a day.

The additional funds will be used to bulk up job and affordable housing schemes in the fiscal year ending March 2023, said the official, who did not want to be named as the information is yet to be made public.

India’s Finance and Rural Development Ministries did not immediately respond to requests for comments.

The government had initially budgeted ₹730 billion for the job scheme and ₹200 billion for the housing scheme. It has already spent ₹632.6 billionon the jobs programme, according to the Rural Development Ministry’s website.

Coming out of the pandemic, the Asian country’s rural areas were under stress, with rising prices and limited non-farm job opportunities, forcing more people to sign up for the government’s job scheme.

The rural unemployment rate has remained above 7% for the majority of the months in the current fiscal year that started on April 1, according to data from Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), a private think-tank.

The rural unemployment rate was 8.04% in October, according to CMIE.

The government is likely to seek approval for these additional funds in the next parliament session, which starts on December 7.

For all the latest business News Click Here 

Read original article here

Denial of responsibility! TechAI is an automatic aggregator around the global media. All the content are available free on Internet. We have just arranged it in one platform for educational purpose only. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, all materials to their authors. If you are the owner of the content and do not want us to publish your materials on our website, please contact us by email – [email protected]. The content will be deleted within 24 hours.