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India's new farm policy likely in a month

NEW DELHI: India's new agriculture policy, aimed at achieving sustained increase in grains output and boosting farm product exports, was likely to be announced in a month, senior government officials said.

"We are hopeful that the policy would come out in a month," Agriculture Secretary Bhaskar Barua told Reuters.

Work on the farm policy was initiated by the previous Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition but the government fell before the policy could be announced.

"The policy will aim at sustained growth in agricultural production and also contain a strategy to boost agricultural commodity exports," said Barua, the highest-ranking civil servant in the Agriculture Ministry.

The policy was expected to be announced in January but "procedural hiccups" had delayed the announcement, said a senior government official, who asked not to be identified.

J.N.L. Srivastava, special secretary in the Agriculture Ministry, said the policy had been sent to the federal cabinet for approval.

Agriculture Ministry officials have said the policy would be "farmer-oriented".

They said the government would also aim to achieve an annual agricultural growth of four percent and double the country's food production in the next 10 years.

India has set a foodgrains output target of 210 million tonnes for 1999/2000 (July-June). The country produced 203.5 million tonnes of foodgrains in 1998/99.-Reuters