Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will hold a press conference at 4 pm today. This is going to be her third press briefing in as many days.
Sitharaman has been announcing the tranches of the Rs 20 lakh crore package announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. PM Modi had announced the package during his address to the nation on Tuesday, vowing to make the country ‘atmanirbhar’ or self-reliant. He said that this will be 10 per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product or GDP.
Sitharaman will be holding daily press conferences till Sunday.
Free food grains and pulses for migrants, more jobs for tribals and those in rural areas, and credit to small enterprises, street vendors and small farmers – these were some of the highlights of the second phase of the package which Sitharaman announced on Thursday.
Totalling Rs 3.16 lakh crore, the schemes include 5 kg rice or wheat and 1 kg ‘chana’ (chickpea) a month, for 80 million migrant families for two months. It will cost Rs 3,500 crore, Sitharaman said at her press conference on Thursday.
A Rs 1,500-crore interest discount scheme aimed at 30 million units, a Rs 5,000-crore special credit facility for five million street vendors, a Rs 6,000-crore Compensatory Afforestation Management & Planning Authority (CAMPA) fund for providing jobs to tribals, a Rs 30,000 core emergency working capital scheme for farmers, a Rs 70,000-crore boost to lower-middle class housing and Rs 2-lakh crore concessional credit offer to 25 million farmers through Kisan Credit Cards were the other thing announced by her.
Sitharaman said that the short-term and the long-term measures are meant to support the poor, including migrants, farmers, tiny businesses and street vendors. “Farmers and workers are the backbone of this nation. They serve all of us with their sweat and toil,” she said on Thursday.
The first tranche of the package, totalling about Rs 5.9 lakh crore, which was announced by Sitharaman on Wednesday, was mainly focused on providing easy credit facilities to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and non-banking finance companies (NBFCs).
