The government is undertaking a medium-term plan for radically augmenting water resources for sustainable development of agriculture sector in the country.
According to official sources, the plan envisages an additional storage capacity of 4.5 MAF of water and nearly a million acres of land will be brought under cultivation and thousands of jobs will be created after completion of the plan.
The agriculture is the most important sector among the four sectors the present government has selected for leading the process of economic growth.
Pakistan has endowed with an immensely productive agrarian base but its harnessing on a sustainable basis has always remained a distant dream. The vulnerabilities, to which agriculture is exposed, were only brought to sharper focus in the wake of recent drought.
The growers are facing problems of price uncertainty and poor marketing methods, narrow export base of agriculture value-added largely confined to crop sector and limited supply of credit compared to actual needs.
A package of financial assistance for farmers has been drawn with the help of all the public sector financial institutions to provide funding for water conservation and development schemes by introducing new means of irrigation and extending loans for installation of tube-wells, open wells de-silting and brick-lining for water channels precision land levelling, drip irrigation system and construction of mini-dams.
Furthermore 10,000 tube-wells will be installed in the provinces to increase the availability of water at farm level. Besides, the government has designed a new policy for corporate agriculture to give a big push to agriculture farming practices.