New Delhi, Mar 8: Bringing festive cheer to 50 lakh Central government employees ahead of Holi, the Cabinet on Friday decided to increase the dearness allowance (DA). The DA will be increased to 47% of gross salary from 41% earlier.

A decision to this effect was taken by the Union Cabinet here on Friday. The hike will be applicable from January 1, 2008, which means that the government employees will also get arrears. Last September the government had increased DA from 35% to 41%. For the exchequer, the 6% hike would mean an additional burden of over Rs 1,500 crore.

The Cabinet also gave its approved release of Rs 2,615 crore to state-owned banks and financial entities to ensure that farmers get short-term crop loans at subsidised rate of 7% during 2007-08. The decision would benefit farmers who avail short-term crop loans up to Rs 3 lakh.

The amount, to be released to PSU banks, regional rural banks, co-operative banks and Nabard, would be used to refinance to RRBs and co-operative banks at concessional rates so that farmers get short-term loans at 7%. The Centre gives 2% interest subvention for such loans.

Meanwhile, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) gave its approval for implementation of the polio eradication strategy with the estimated expenditure of Rs 2344.56 crore.

The department of health and family welfare will be permitted to negotiate with the World Bank and other external funding Agencies

and access external funds in order to bridge the gap between total requirements and availability so that reliance on domestic budgetary resources could be reduced to the minimum.

The CCEA also cleared implementation of the Central sector plan scheme of assistance to states and union territories or conducting 18th livestock census during the Eleventh Five-Year Plan period (2007-12) with an outlay of Rs 301.34 crore. The entire funding will be done by the Central government.

The approval would help in the collection of detailed data on livestock, poultry, agricultural implements and machinery and fishery statistics and infrastructure related to these sectors and their computerisation and report publication. The livestock census data would provide the basis for planning and formulation of schemes aimed at bringing further development in the animal husbandry, poultry and fisheries sectors