Representatives of different farmers' organizations have said that the agriculture sector has been completely neglected in the proposed budget for 2019-20. The Kissan Board Pakistan (KBP) has announced to participate in Jamaat-e-Islami rally convened on June 16 to protest against anti-agriculture policies of the present government.
Punjab Water Council (PWC) founder convener and Basmati Growers Association (BGA) Director Farooq Bajwa while talking to Business Recorder said that the budgetary allocations were beyond his understanding as the government on one hand imposed taxes of about Rs 300 billion but on the other offered mere peanuts to this sector. He alleged that the government had increased the General Sales Tax (GST) on sugar from present 7 percent to 17 percent at a time when growers had exhausted their produce. He said there would be no benefit of this increase of GST to the growers. He also claimed that the country might be seeing a sugar crisis by November.
Bajwa also criticized increase in sales tax on tractors and said that the government is expecting to generate Rs 11 billion through this increase but did not realize that tractors are used for agricultural sector to take the produce to the markets and transport bricks etc. He said the small tractor would have a jump of Rs 40,000 in its price due to this sales tax increase thus hindering the way of mechanization in this sector. He was also critical that the government had withdrawn the exemption of GST on pesticides and herbicides. He said this tax was imposed in PPP regime but reduced in Nawaz Sharif era.
He said due to increase in dollar prices and now imposition of GST, one bottle of pesticide which was available at Rs 500 previously would now be available from Rs 900-1000 per bottle. He also criticized the withdrawal of subsidy in natural gas and electricity prices for fertilizer plants and said that it would push the input cost of farmers upward. "Agriculture is the biggest user of diesel in Pakistan where annually 14 billion liters of diesel is used and the government is receiving Rs 39 per liter as tax on it. This also increases its cost of input, industry can pass such costs to consumers but farmers cannot," he added.
Meanwhile, KBP spokesman Haji Ramazan in his initial reaction said that there was nothing for the growers in this budget. He said the government had tried to console this sector through jugglery of words. He said subsidy method in this sector was also not helpful to the growers and the government should introduce the direct subsidy system. He said they would be fully participating in the protest demonstration of Jamaat-e-Islami to lodge their protest on this anti-agriculture budget.
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