KARACHI: A former chairman of the Standing Committee on Agriculture of the FPCCI and Businessmen Panel Secretary-General (Federal) Chaudhry Ahmad Jawad has asked the government to offer special tariff concessions and give policy on the import of quality seeds suitable to our soil conditions until the PARC and the NARC becomes self-sufficient in the production of seeds.
Apart from this, he demanded of the government to direct the ZTBL to start providing finances to agro-based industries on special rates in order to give a push to value addition as well as agricultural exports of the country.
He urged the ZTBL to initiate lending on value addition for the revival of the agro-industry.
He said the country witnessed major breakthroughs in cotton production from 1985 to 1992 when cotton production increased to 12.8 million bales.
It was a paradigm shift when Punjab produced 11.4m bales while Sindh 1.4m bales.
In 2017, cotton production was 11.93m bales which fell to 9.861m in 2018 and 9.451m in 2019.
He said cotton production in the country was experiencing a declining trend over the past few years, and ironically the Pakistan Central Cotton Committee (PCCC) was operating without a full-time chief executive and requisite staff in their different centres.
Similarly horticulturists of the country are facing challenges in competing with rivals in the international market as the government has not been able to implement a food security policy in order to provide a cushion to the sector in a sustainable manner.
The Ministry of National Food Security and Research (MNFSR) failed to come up with the implementation of National Food Security Policy document which was completed during the previous government's tenure.
Highlighting the immense potential for Pakistan in the horticultural sector, Jawad pointed out that the country was the 13th largest producer of kinnows in the world, sixth largest producer of mangoes and fifth largest producer of dates.
Not only this, the country also harvests big crops of cotton, sugarcane, rice, potatoes, onions and wheat.
"We are not only leading producers of these products but these have a unique taste due to favourable soil conditions, but still the country has failed to derive the benefits because of absence of a proper agricultural policy and an implementation mechanism," Jawad said.
The organisation must extend fresh loans to the farmers, especially to the small farmers, in all the four provinces equally, currently the bank's disbursement tilt was towards Punjab only, he said.
"Agriculture in the country will improve if the ZTBL plays its actual role through new initiatives.
"The bank must encourage value addition activities in fruits and vegetables being grown in different areas of all provinces in order to export such products including extending financing facilities i) small oil extracting units for promotion of oil substitution crops i.e. canola, soybean, sunflower, mustard and olive, ii) financing for silo (crop warehousing facilities construction), iii) financing for milk chilling units to promote standardized dairy supply chains, iv) horticulture and establishment of green houses/tunnel farming, v) financing for silage baler for promoting silage making," he said.
On edible side of imports, Pakistan spends a substantial amount of its foreign exchange on import of edible oils every year. In order to save the precious foreign exchange, the ZTBL must introduce concessional loans for the farmers to encourage them to sow soybean, canola and sunflower over larger areas of the country, but there are no concessional loans for import substitution crops.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020
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