According to the Agriculture Ministry's data, all 17 insurance companies -- five public and 12 private -- empanelled under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) registered a margin of ₹15,029 crore as they paid out claims of a mere ₹2,767 crore against the ₹17,796 crore collected as premium. PMFBY is exempted from Service Tax (now a part of GST), as per its operational guidelines. Similarly, these companies have earned over 96 per cent profit under another crop insurance scheme -- Restructured Weather-Based Insurance Scheme (RWBCIS) -- during kharif 2017-18 as they received ₹ 1,694 crore as premium and paid out just ₹ 69.93 crore as claim compensation, figures accessed by the IANS show. During the last kharif (2016-17) season, the insurance companies had earned 44 per cent profit as they received ₹15,735 crore while they incurred expenditure of ₹8,862 crore in claims made by the farmers. According to the Agriculture Insurance Company of India (AICI), the nodal agency for these schemes, the business has been "profitable" since they were launched in February 2016. "A good monsoon has certainly helped increase food production, which we think has led to such profits," said a senior AICI official, who wished not to be named. Earlier, under previous insurance schemes, the AICI had paid as much as ₹2.80 as compensation claim against the premium of ₹1, causing it to incur significant losses, said the official. The government and insurance companies cite a "good monsoon" and "higher production" for the low claims. But there were cases of extreme climatic conditions, drought like situations, and floods at many places, said Chandra Bhushan, deputy director of the non-profit Centre for Science and Environment (CSE). "You cannot call it a good year to back low pay-outs since issues such as extreme climate and floods have been reported at many places. There are issues with assessment, payment dispersal along with technology issues. If claims are so low like 15% (of premium collected), the country's agriculture has no problem. There is no need to have any such crop insurance scheme then," he added. Interestingly, these insurance companies are bound to safeguard their interests by taking reinsurance cover and the government is to provide protection to them in case premium to claims ratio exceeds 1:3.5 or the percentage of claims to "Sum Insured" exceeds 35 per cent, whichever is higher. Farm activists find a "big lacuna" in the design of the PMFBY, saying it has been more beneficial to the insurer than farmers. Kavitha Kuruganti of non-profit Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture (ASHA) said Crop Cutting Experiment (CCE), which is done to obtain accurate estimates of crop output, is conducted in a unscientific manner. "The samples collected for CCE are not scientific. The consequences are that the farmers are not benefitted but the companies," she said. In addition, claims made by farmers for crop loss have found not to be settled by the insurance companies on time.