On farm warehousing capacity for food grains will be established under public-private partnership programme. This was stated by provincial Minister for Agricultural Marketing, Rana Muhammad Qasim Noon, while talking to a delegation of farmers at his office, here on Tuesday.
Noon revealed that the government has allocated Rs 50 million for the purpose, while the Bank of Punjab (BoP) will provide financial assistance to the farmers for setting up these storages. A warehouse will have a storage capacity of 2000 to 5000 bags, while a pilot project in this regard has been initiated in Jhang and will be expanded to other areas of the province soon.
Discussing details of the project, he said that the Bank of Punjab would provide loans to the farmers through Farmer Marketing Co-operative (FMC). A FMC will be consisted of 10 farmers belonging to a same village. A farmer having less than 25 acres of land can be member of the FMC.
He further said that the BoP would extend loans to farmers at very low mark-up ratio of 2 percent returnable in five-year period. About the godowns he said that these would be built out side the cities, however, there will have a proper access to the roads to ensure easy transportation of the produces to the market. The construction of these storages will be carried out through the FMC, however, a government representative will supervise the construction process, he added.
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