Bengal to have special fund for note ban-hit workers, farmers

Kolkata, Feb 10 (IANS) Criticising the central government's demonetisation move, West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra on Friday set aside Rs 250 crore to assist workers who lost their jobs due to the note ban.

Presenting a budget for 2017-18 sans any fresh taxes, Mitra also proposed a Rs 100 crore special fund for farmers and agricultural workers who suffered due to the demonetisation.

"There are many workers who have lost their jobs due to demonetisation and came back to the state. They have been suffering a lot. I am proposing a one-time grant of Rs 50,000 each to 50,000 jobless workers so that they could start their own venture. For this, I allocate a fund of Rs 250 crore in this budget," Mitra said.

"Farmers and agricultural workers, who depend on cooperative loans, have suffered a lot after implementation of note ban. I propose a Rs 100 crore special fund in order to alleviate their hardships," he said, even as most of the opposition benches remained vacant with Congress and Left Front members boycotting the House in protest against the alleged assault on Leader of the Opposition Abdul Mannan inside the House on Wednesday.

Terming the note ban as an 'unprecedented' move, Mitra said scrapping of higher value notes have not only impacted the small and medium enterprises but also destroyed the entire supply chain across sectors.

Eminent economists predicted that the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth could be affected by a range of 1-3.5 per cent, Mitra said, adding that the state's economic growth rate could also be restricted to 9.27 per cent, he said.

He proposed to provide Rs 64,733 crore for the state plan outlay for 2017-18. The total expenditure was estimated at Rs 7,06,381.81 crore.

Mitra also said that in spite of the tsunami of demonetisation, till now the state government was able to create 13,27,000 employment during 2016-17.

In order to incentivise home buyers, he also proposed to reduce the stamp duty on Agreement of Sale to 2 per cent from the present rate of 5- 7 per cent.

"..many times the traders of flats or apartments delay the registration of property. I propose to incentivise early registration of such properties by reducing the registration fee by 20 per cent if the registration is done within one year from the date of completion of property," Mitra said.

The budget also hiked he honorariums paid to community health workers (ASHA) and anganwadi workers by Rs 500.

Later, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee told the media that her government will conduct a survey to identify skilled workers who have become jobless due to demonetisation.

She also lauded the budget, "Our is the best budget. Other states have more resources but such a humane budget has not been presented by anyone," she said.

Welcoming the budget proposals, industry bodies said they reaffirmed "state government's commitment to aiding inclusive growth".

"Both the funds for SMEs and farmers will be good for the state economy. SMEs and MSMEs, are arguably the biggest source of jobs and livelihood. They will be very happy because many of them struggle for want of credit flow," said CII West Bengal Chairman, Anil Vaswani.

Political opponents, however, were far from impressed.

"We want to ask in which sectors 13.27 lakh jobs have been created," asked CPI-M leader and former state Finance Minister Asim Dasgupta. He argued that across the country, the figure of new employment opportunities has been pegged at 1.50 lakh in 2016-17.

State BJP President Dilip Ghosh, said: "The state's total income was 1.29 lakh crore. Of which (Prime Minister) Narendra Modi has given Rs 78,000 crore. The budget stands on the money given by the central government. But they are constantly blaming him for everything."

(This story has not been edited by Social News XYZ staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)