Arun Jaitley bats for blending subsidy with investment to boost farm sector

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday made a case for blending subsidy with investment to augment farm sector growth and make it sustainable. He also said formalisation of the economy has started showing visible result in terms of higher resource mobilisation, leaving more in the hands of the government for the capital formation in various sectors.

“There is a lot of formalisation of economy taking place in several other sectors... We can see visible results, and it is leading to additional resources in the hands of the government. I don't think this process will now be reversed,” he said, after releasing a book titled Supporting Indian Farms the Smart Way. The book, co-authored by agriculture economist Ashok Gulati, showed that public investment in agriculture as percentage of GDP declined from 3.9 per cent in 1980-81 to 2.2 per cent in 2014-15, while input subsidies as a percentage of agriculture GDP increased from 2.8 per cent of about 8 per cent during the same period.