Giving an impetus to air connectivity to farm produce and perishable goods, 58 airports have been included under the second edition of the Krishi Udan Scheme.

This information was given by the Minister of State for Civil Aviation V K Singh in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha on Thursday (4 August).

While the Krishi Udan Scheme was launched in August 2020 on international and national routes to transport agricultural products, Krishi Udan Scheme 2.0 was announced in October 2021 by enhancing the existing provisions and mainly focusing on transporting perishable food products from the hilly areas, North-Eastern States and tribal areas.

The scheme assists farmers in transporting agricultural products so that it improves their value realisation.

Under this scheme, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) provides a complete waiver of Landing, Parking charges, Terminal Navigation Landing Charges (TNLC) and Route Navigation Facility Charges (RNFC) for Indian freighters and P2C (Passenger-to-Cargo) Aircraft primarily around 25 airports focusing on North Eastern, Hilly and Tribal region and 28 airports in other areas.

Further, after evaluation of Krishi Udan 2.0, five more airports have been included, making it 58.

It must be noted that Krishi Udan Scheme is a convergence scheme where eight Ministries or Departments, namely the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Department of Agriculture & Farmers' Welfare, Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying, Department of Fisheries, Ministry of Food Processing Industries, Department of Commerce, Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Ministry of Development of North-Eastern Region (DoNER) would leverage their existing schemes to strengthen the logistics for transportation of Agri-produce.

Under Krishi Udan Scheme, a total of 1,08,479 Metric Tonne perishable cargo (International + Domestic) was handled in Financial Year 2021-22 (till 28 February 2022) compared to 84, 042 Metric Tonnes handled in Financial Year 2020-21 at AAI airports.