Meghalaya Govt to spend Rs 100 Cr for implementing CM ASSURE scheme to help farmers in distress
The state Cabinet on Friday has approved the CM ASSURE scheme, a targeted market intervention initiative focused exclusively on non-perishable commodities.
This scheme aims to address the challenges of price volatility that small and marginal farmers in Meghalaya face, particularly during periods of market downturns.
“…the government has decided to keep a corpus of Rs 100 crore to intervene in these situations so that the farmers during distress are supported and helped,” Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma told reporters after chairing the first cabinet meeting of the year at Sohra.
A dedicated fund of Rs 100 Crore will be established to facilitate procurement and cover administrative expenses.
“We are also getting Rs 20 crore from the tribal affairs ministry to further support this particular programme because the government of India has also a scheme but they have limited amounts. This will be a pool that will keep revolving because we buy the products and through the marketing board, we will sell it and it will come back to this pool and we will keep rotating it and intervene as and when required to help the farmers especially for non-perishable products,” he added.
The chief minister further announced that the challenges faced by the broomstick and arecanut farmers will be addressed this year under the new scheme.
“The broomstick farmers are facing a lot of problems. They have met me and in fact from East Khasi Hills broomstick farmers met me about two months back and that is what has triggered this particular thought process to come up with a programme to give some kind of a relief during distress time and therefore, we are happy to announce this programme,” he said.
“We have seen the market price for broomsticks and the market price for arecanut has been very unstable in the last few years and it continues even today and therefore, we feel a very strong need for intervention from the government side to be there to procure these products and then resell them and through the marketing board, the process will be done,” Sangma added.
Stating that the government doing multiple programmes and policies and schemes to support farmers, the Chief Minister said, “Government is setting up processing units so that the farmers’ perishable products are not loss is a programme where more than 200 plus processing units are being set up, 30 of them are large scale units where minimum 5000 farmers in each of these large units are being supported. These schemes are there to help the perishable products for example if you have different fruit products they are being converted to chips, powdered, ice cream.”
“So, we are taking interventions for pineapple packaging and processing is being done in Ri Bhoi, we are going to have a large processing unit that is going to come up for ginger in Ri Bhoi district,” he added.
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