New Delhi, July 26 (IANS) As part of the Centre’s campaign to empower women in rural areas, 810 Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) have been registered with 100 per cent women members, while out of the overall registration of 19,82,835, farmers in FPOs, as many as 6,86,665 are women farmers, according to the information tabled in Parliament on Friday.

Members of FPOs are eligible for support for end-to-end services covering almost all aspects of cultivation from inputs, technical services to processing and marketing, in order to enhance their earnings.

Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan stated in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha that a total of 8,780 FPOs have already been registered across the country as part of the Centre’s scheme to create 10,000 such entities.

The minister stated that provisions have been made in the operational guidelines of the FPOs scheme to increase women’s participation.

The scheme has a clause to provide special focus to include small, marginal and women farmers/women SHGs, SC/ST farmers and other economically weaker categories as members to make FPOs more effective and inclusive.

Besides, adequate representation has to be given to women on the Board of Directors and Governing Body as the case may be, he added.

–IANS

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New Delhi, July 26 (IANS) At the company’s 113th AGM address, Sanjiv Puri, Chairman and Managing Director, ITC Ltd, shared his vision on ‘ITC: Stakeholder Value through Purposeful Performance’.

In his address, Puri said ITC’s digital investments power mainstreaming of the digital-first culture, transforming all facets of operations – from insighting to product development, smart sourcing to on-time efficient delivery, superior brand engagement, and marketing through real-time content, connect, and commerce.

“ITC’s Trade Marketing & Distribution infrastructure has transformed into a smart omni-channel network, with a 2x growth in market coverage with three out of four retailers carrying our FMCG products,” Puri said.

ITC has also launched six exclusive D2C platforms. The e-B2B platform of ITC, UNNATI, continues to be rapidly scaled up, covering nearly seven lakh outlets.

ITCMAARS — the ‘phygital’ eco-system that enables wider agri-tech adoption — enhances efficiencies and access to markets as well as financial services. Leveraging the power of collectives, the ITCMAARS ecosystem now constitutes over 1,650 FPOs covering more than 1.5 million farmers.

“By 2030, we aspire to connect over 10 million farmers. The predictive, hyperlocal and dynamic advisories coupled with an input marketplace have enhanced net farmer returns up to 30 per cent in a short span of time.

“Over 10,000 plus soil tests, with personalised crop nutrition recommendations based on sophisticated AI-based algorithms, have been facilitated resulting in 10-15 per cent reduction in fertiliser usage and 15-20 per cent improvement in crop yields,” Puri said.

He added that agri-tech solutions are also being progressed across multiple value chains including drone usage, which focuses on nano nutrients and crop protection.

Through remote sensing, ITCMAARS has digitised 6 million acres covering 1,000 FPOs to help deliver contextual and crop stage-specific personalised advisories.

Recently, ITCMAARS launched the world’s first GenAI-based regional voice chatbot for farmers called ‘KrishiMitra’ which has been co-developed with Microsoft.

ITCMAARS also harnesses the collective knowledge garnered over decades to provide the farmers best-in-class services. This includes the experience gained from ITC’s Baareh Mahine Hariyali programme, which enabled a substantial increase in farmer incomes.

“The expertise gained has also enabled us to implement such best practices in 45 aspirational districts. Exclusive PPPs with NITI Aayog in 27 such districts have improved yields up to 30 per cent, and reduced cultivation costs by nearly 15 per cent, thereby boosting farmer income by up to 60 per cent. In addition, over five lakh farmers are trained annually in best practices through the Farmer Field Schools and demonstration farms organised by ITC,” Puri said.

ITC’s wholly-owned subsidiary, ITC Infotech, sustained its growth momentum and global expansion through capability-led strategic partnerships, he added.

In line with its ‘Orbit Next’ strategy, ITC Infotech also augmented its portfolio of solutions. During the year, the company acquired Blazeclan Technologies to strengthen its capabilities in the Cloud services space and to make scalable progress in digital transformation solutions.

–IANS

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New Delhi, July 26 (IANS) Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharman said on Friday that just like in the past, all states have been allocated funds in the Union Budget 2024-25, and no state has been denied anything.

In an exclusive interview with Sanjay Pugalia, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of NDTV Network, the Finance Minister rejected the opposition’s claim that her Budget speech mentioned only two states — Andhra Pradesh and Bihar, both ruled by the BJP’s key allies.

She pointed out that the Centre was required by law to support Andhra Pradesh after its bifurcation in 2014.

“States are receiving allocations as they did in the past… no state has been denied anything. The Act (Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act) requires the Centre to support (the state) in building its capital city and developing the backward regions,” she explained.

“Several steps have been taken in the last 10 years and many other steps, as per the Act, which had to be taken have been taken. Yes, we will support the building of the new capital at Amaravati and the Polavaram irrigation project … Polavaram should have been completed by now but there were some technical issues. The state government is seized of the matter,” Sitharaman said.

Responding particularly to the criticism by Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge, the Finance Minister said, “To the point he raised – that I have not named many states and spoke only about two states… The Congress was in power for a long time. They presented many Budgets and should know that in every Budget, you don’t get an opportunity to name every state of the country.”

Sitharaman also said the Budget reflected Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s wish to keep things simple, so that everyone, and not just subject experts, could understand India’s finances.

“We present everything upfront. There is no fine print… We ensure that any changes made are communicated openly, based on feedback and transparent processes,” she pointed out.

The Finance Minister also said that borrowing is a must for a growing economy to meet its needs and aspirations, but the focus of the Finance Ministry under her is to ensure that debt is reduced without affecting growth.

She added that fixing a number for the eventual fiscal deficit and working towards it with temporary solutions every year can be one way of going about things, but it is not the right way from a macroeconomic perspective.

“We have chosen a healthy option for getting the fiscal deficit closer to the number. Instead of looking at the number alone, it is also about the way you decide to get there. An obvious method for every country is to reduce debt, but borrowing is a must for a growing economy. The question is how much are you borrowing and where it is being used,” the Finance Minister said.

–IANS

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New Delhi, July 26 (IANS) Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Friday that it is the duty of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to regulate the futures and options (F&O) markets amid concerns over excess volatility in the derivatives segment.

In an interaction with Sanjay Pugalia, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of the NDTV Network, the Finance Minister said: “We believe it is for SEBI to do that regulation in the market, just like they have been voicing concerns about the speculative activity happening in the F&O market.”

In a bid to foster a more stable and mature investment environment, the government, in the Union Budget 2024, has announced an increase in security transactions tax (STT) on futures and options trading.

The Finance Minister said the budget proposal to increase the securities transaction tax on futures and options is to “show the government’s intent to indicate to people the high-risk nature of such markets, and not to raise revenue”.

“We leave it to SEBI to give a soft-touch regulatory approach to F&O and cash markets,” she said.

The Finance Minister also said that there is no sector out of the government’s consideration for foreign direct investment (FDI).

“We have opened and expanded every sector for FDI in the last 10 years. Even the sectors that were already open have seen further expansion,” said the minister.

Regarding FDI from China, Minister Sitharaman said that to her knowledge, “there have been no discussions”.

As petrol and diesel are currently taxed under VAT rather than Goods and Services Tax (GST), the Finance Minister emphasised that for this transition to take place, states must unify and reach a consensus in the GST Council.

“If they fix the rate and they all come together and decide that GST will include petroleum products, then we can implement it immediately,” Sitharaman added.

Currently, the rates of petrol vary from state to state depending on the local incidence of taxation.

–IANS

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Mumbai, July 26 (IANS) Digital payments in India have registered a 12.6 per cent increase year-on-year with the RBI’s Digital Payments Index (RBI-DPI) rising to 445.5 at the end of March 2024 compared to 418.77 in September 2023 and 395.57 in March 2023.

“The RBI-DPI index has increased across all parameters driven by significant growth in payment performance and payment infrastructure across the country over the period,” the RBI said on Friday.

The Reserve Bank has been publishing a composite RBI-DPI index since January 1, 2021 with March 2018 as the base to capture the extent of digitisation of payments across the country.

The RBI-DPI comprises 5 broad parameters that enable the measurement of penetration of digital payments in the country over different time periods.

These parameters are — (i) Payment Enablers (weight 25 per cent); (ii) Payment Infrastructure – Demand-side factors (10 per cent); (iii) Payment Infrastructure – Supply-side factors (15 per cent); (iv) Payment Performance (45 per cent), and (v) Consumer Centricity (5 per cent).

Each of these parameters has sub-parameters which, in turn, consist of various measurable indicators.

–IANS

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