India's Food and Agriculture Minister announced plans to increase power supply and subsidized diesel to farmers to help them overcome the impact of drought.
[Sharad Pawar, India’s Food and Agriculture Minister]:
“We want to help the farmers. We are taking two or three steps like providing more electricity and diesel subsidies to the state government with an aim to help the farmers in producing the food grains.”
The minister said that India’s sugar output for the season has not been promising and the government may ask mills to increase supply of low-priced sugar for public distribution.
Currently mills are forced to sell 10 percent of their output at low state-set prices, and this may be raised to 20 percent.