KOLKATA: West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra has dished out a number of relief measures targeting the agriculture sector during the presentation of the state budget for 2018-19. He announced relief in payment of stamp duty fees for the rural sector, exemption of agriculture tax and cess on green tea leaves, mutation fees exemption for farmers, farmers' pension, and creation of corpus for assisting them. Several measures for women have also been considered, including an increase of 'Kanyashri' scholarship and introduction of marriage assistance under the 'Rupashree' scheme with an initial outlay of Rs 1500 Crore.
Also announced are measures to help the physically challenged by increasing their pension amount for Rs 750 to Rs 1000 per month that will benefit 2 Lakh people. An outlay for the scheme, named 'Manabik' has been pegged at Rs 250 Crore. Stamp duty payment in the rural areas for properties between Rs 40 Lakh and Rs 1 Crore had been reduced from 6 to 5 per cent. Stamp duty has also been reduced for the urban sector, from 7 to 6 per cent. The government also proposed to create an assistance corpus of Rs 100 Crore for the farmers to be given out when in distress, and increase in farmers' pension from Rs 750 to Rs 1000 per month to cover 1 Lakh beneficiaries.
Size of the budget for the year 2018-19 s Rs 2,14,958 Crore, Mitra said, adding the state has been able to create employment for 8.92 Lakh persons despite the adverse impact of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and demonetisation.
