(Bloomberg) -- India plans to provide more farm loans in the year starting in April to ease farmers’ financial stress and boost agricultural production.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in her budget speech in parliament on Monday that the government will target to ensure farm loans worth 16.5 trillion rupees ($226 billion) in the next fiscal year, compared with 15 trillion rupees announced in 2020-21.

The government’s move comes at a time when tens of thousands of farmers have been camping on the outskirts of the nation’s capital demanding that the Narendra Modi government roll back three new laws they say will hurt their incomes and make farming in India harder. The measures may provide some relief to cultivators, who have seen depressed crop prices due to bumper production following favorable rains.

Production of monsoon-sown food grains is seen climbing to a record 144.52 million tons in 2020-21, from 143.38 million tons a year earlier, according to the farm ministry.

The proposed budget measure assumes significance as about 60% of India’s 1.3 billion people depend either directly for indirectly on agriculture, which accounts for 16% of its $2.8 trillion economy. The nation is the world’s top grower of cotton, the second-biggest producer of wheat, rice and sugar, and the largest importer of palm oil.

Small and marginal farmers with as much as two hectares (five acres) of land account for about 86% of all cultivators in India but own just 47% of the crop area. The nation annually spends about $14 billion on food subsidies.

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