WHAT IS THE PRADHAN MANTRI FASAL BIMA YOJANA (PMFBY)
The Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, New Delhi launched PMFBY from the Kharif 2016 season onwards. It replaces all the prevailing yield insurance schemes in India. The scheme has extended coverage under localized risks, post-harvest losses, etc., and aims at the adoption of technology for the purpose of yield estimation.
Through increased farmer awareness and low farmer premium rates, the scheme aims at increasing crop insurance penetration in India.
National Insurance Company started participating in PMFBY from Rabi 2016 onwards and covered 8 States and 2 Union Territories during the past 5 seasons namely, Rabi 2016-17, Kharif & Rabi 2017 and Kharif & Rabi 2018 covering 70,27,637 farmers. The claims of Kharif 18 and Rabi 18 are under process, we have closed the first 3 seasons with which 17,66,455 no of farmers benefited, which shows almost 50% of the farmers insured were benefitted.
For Revised Operational Guidelines issued by the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, New Delhi visit: www.pmfby.gov.in.
There are Two Schemes under the said operational Guidelines.
1. Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) – Elaborated hereunder.
2. Revised Weather Based Crop Insurance Scheme (RWBCIS) – Please refer to PMFBY website for details.
Objective Of PMFBY:
Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) aims at supporting sustainable production in the agriculture sector by way of
a) Providing financial support to farmers suffering crop loss/damage arising because of natural calamities, pests & diseases.
b) Stabilizing the income of farmers to ensure their continuance in farming
c) Encouraging farmers to adopt innovative and modern agricultural practices
d) Ensuring the flow of credit to the agriculture sector; which will contribute to food security, crop diversification, and enhancing growth and competitiveness of the agriculture sector besides protecting farmers from production risks.
Highlights Of The Scheme:
- There is a uniform premium of only 2% for all Kharif crops and 1.5% for all Rabi crops., that farmers will pay In the case of annual commercial and horticultural crops, the premium to be paid by farmers will be only 5%. The premium rates paid by farmers are very low. In addition the balance premium will be paid by the Government to provide the full insured amount to the farmers against crop loss on account of natural calamities.
- There is no upper limit on Government subsidies. Even if the balance premium is 90%, its carried by the Government.
- Earlier, there was a provision of capping the premium rate which resulted in low claims being paid to farmers. This capping was done to limit Government’s outgo on the premium subsidy. This capping has now been removed and farmers will get a claim against the full sum insured without any reduction.
- This will encourage use of technology to a great extent. Smartphones will be used to capture and upload data of crop cutting to reduce the delays in claim payments to farmers. Remote sensing will be used to reduce the number of crop-cutting experiments.
- PMFBY is a replacement scheme of NAIS / MNAIS, there will be an exemption from Service Tax liability of all the services involved in the implementation of the scheme. It is estimated that the new scheme will ensure about 75-80 percent of subsidy for the farmers in insurance premium.
