Tripura bamboo farmers welcome Union Budget

Agartala (Tripura) [India] Feb 2 (ANI): The bamboo farmers in Tripura's Agartala have welcomed the Union Budget 2018 under which Rs 1,290 crore have been allocated for a Restructured National Bamboo Mission.

This mission will be launched to promote the bamboo sector in a holistic manner.

"The Union Budget 2018 is a farmer-friendly proposal. They have particularly kept provision for the bamboo sector. If implemented properly farmers from North-East will get better opportunity to earn their livelihood through bamboo," Centre for Forest-based Livelihoods and Extension, PK Kaushik told ANI.

A bamboo farmer, Samir Acharjee, said, "This will benefit us as well as the bamboo artisans and those who make their houses out of bamboo. Now bamboo is a thing which is useful everywhere in our day to day life and so everyone will be benefited due to this budget".

For agriculture sector, this year's budget has proposed increasing the minimum support price (MSP) of all crops to at least 1.5 times that of the production cost.

"I make furniture out of bamboo and this time Rs. 1200 crores allocated in the budget for bamboo will be of great help to people like us and all those engaged with the bamboo sector," a bamboo artisan, Sreeram Shil, told ANI.

The budget also announced Rs 500 crore for Operation Green. The allocation to food processing ministry has been increased to Rs. 1,400 crore from Rs. 715 crore.

For the development of the rural economy, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his speech said that Rs 14.34 lakh crore will be spent for providing livelihood to rural India through infrastructure building. (ANI)