AGL 37.91 Decreased By ▼ -0.11 (-0.29%)
AIRLINK 215.50 Increased By ▲ 18.14 (9.19%)
BOP 9.80 Increased By ▲ 0.26 (2.73%)
CNERGY 6.83 Increased By ▲ 0.92 (15.57%)
DCL 9.18 Increased By ▲ 0.36 (4.08%)
DFML 39.00 Increased By ▲ 3.26 (9.12%)
DGKC 100.80 Increased By ▲ 3.94 (4.07%)
FCCL 36.50 Increased By ▲ 1.25 (3.55%)
FFBL 88.94 Increased By ▲ 6.64 (8.07%)
FFL 14.49 Increased By ▲ 1.32 (10.02%)
HUBC 134.52 Increased By ▲ 6.97 (5.46%)
HUMNL 13.65 Increased By ▲ 0.15 (1.11%)
KEL 5.69 Increased By ▲ 0.37 (6.95%)
KOSM 7.39 Increased By ▲ 0.39 (5.57%)
MLCF 46.00 Increased By ▲ 1.30 (2.91%)
NBP 61.20 Decreased By ▼ -0.22 (-0.36%)
OGDC 233.25 Increased By ▲ 18.58 (8.66%)
PAEL 40.75 Increased By ▲ 1.96 (5.05%)
PIBTL 8.57 Increased By ▲ 0.32 (3.88%)
PPL 203.15 Increased By ▲ 10.07 (5.22%)
PRL 41.15 Increased By ▲ 2.49 (6.44%)
PTC 28.38 Increased By ▲ 2.58 (10%)
SEARL 108.40 Increased By ▲ 4.80 (4.63%)
TELE 8.75 Increased By ▲ 0.45 (5.42%)
TOMCL 36.00 Increased By ▲ 1.00 (2.86%)
TPLP 13.80 Increased By ▲ 0.50 (3.76%)
TREET 24.38 Increased By ▲ 2.22 (10.02%)
TRG 61.15 Increased By ▲ 5.56 (10%)
UNITY 34.47 Increased By ▲ 1.50 (4.55%)
WTL 1.74 Increased By ▲ 0.14 (8.75%)
BR100 12,244 Increased By 517.6 (4.41%)
BR30 38,419 Increased By 2042.6 (5.62%)
KSE100 113,924 Increased By 4411.3 (4.03%)
KSE30 36,044 Increased By 1530.5 (4.43%)

Pakistan Association of Automotive Parts and Accessories Manufacturers (PAAPAM) in its emergent meeting on Wednesday raised serious concern over the Sindh Tractor Scheme and termed it non-transparent and counterproductive. PAAPAM called an emergent meeting of its management committee to discuss the Sindh government tractor subsidy scheme and deliberated in details the pros and cons of the scheme. It was unanimously agreed that historically such schemes have been harmful for the industry.
The PAAPAM Chairman Mumshad Ali said that tractor subsidy schemes have had serious transparency issues in the past where level playing field was not provided to all the assemblers of tractors, besides such schemes were money making opportunity for the influentials, who end up winning the balloting for such schemes and later sell the scheme tractors in the open market at lower than factory prices.
Besides, such schemes disrupt the natural sale cycle of the industry. Tractor sales was dropped at the time of announcement of such schemes in the provincial budgets as was witnessed in June last year, followed by a drop in sales before the official launch of such schemes, he added.
The chairman further said that these subsidy schemes should be replaced with the low mark-up five-year loans for the farmers which would make the tractor affordable for the farmers and give long term growth to the industry. He asked the political leadership of the provinces and the country to compare the tractor growth in neighbouring India over the last five years, with the demand pattern for tractors in Pakistan. Tractor sales have halved since 2011 in Pakistan whereas in India they are on a steady growth pattern due to coherent and stable policies, he added.
He urged the government to put prudent policies in place which work in unison. The federal government levies general sales tax on tractors which has changed several times in the last five years, while the provincial governments subsidies them one year and leave it at the market's mercy.
The government should address the tractor issue on long-term basis keeping in view the shortage of farm mechanisation in the country when compared with other countries in the region and the world. Long-term view must be taken and short-term measures discontinued, he maintained.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2016

Comments

Comments are closed.