The Union Cabinet has approved Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, a new crop insurance scheme to boost farming sector in the country.
It is farmers’ welfare scheme that aims to reduce the premium burden on farmers and ensure early settlement of crop assurance claim for the full insured sum.
Highlights of Scheme
- Uniform premium: Farmers will pay uniform premium of 2 per cent for all Kharif crops and 1.5 percent for all Rabi crops.
- In case of annual commercial and horticultural crops, the premium to be paid by farmers will be only 5%.
- The premium rates to be paid by farmers are very low and balance premium will be paid by the Government to provide full insured amount to the farmers against crop loss on account of natural calamities.
- There is no upper limit on Government subsidy. Even if balance premium is 90%, it will be borne by the Government.
- Earlier, there was a provision of capping the premium rate which resulted in low claims being paid to farmers. This capping was done to limit Government outgo on the premium subsidy. This capping has now been removed and farmers will get claim against full sum insured without any reduction.
- The use of technology will be encouraged to a great extent. Smart phones will be used to capture and upload data of crop cutting to reduce the delays in claim payment to farmers. Remote sensing will be used to reduce the number of crop cutting experiments.
The new Crop Insurance Scheme has been formulated in line with One Nation–One Scheme theme. It replaces existing two schemes viz. National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (MNAIS) and Modified National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (MNAIS) by removing their inherent drawbacks (shortcomings) and incorporating the best features of all previous schemes.