NEW DELHI: The Centre hiked on Wednesday the minimum support price (MSP) of 14 kharif (summer sown) crops for the 2018-19 marketing season, syncing it with BJP’s 2014 poll promise to provide farmers a profit margin of at least 50% over their cost of production for all the notified crops across the country.
Seven of these 14 crops have reported hikes of nearly 20% or more as compared to the MSP of these crops in 2017-18. The most popular kharif crop, paddy, has, however, got a hike of nearly 13% (from Rs 1,550 per quintal in 2017-18 to Rs 1,750 per quintal in 2018-19).
The new MSPs of these crops were approved by the Cabinet committee on economic affairs (CCEA), chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Wednesday. Modi later called it a “historic increase” and tweeted that the government has fulfilled its promise of increasing the MSP to the tune of one and a half times of the cost of production.
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