Sindh Abadgar Board (SAB) President Abdul Majeed Nizamani appealed to President General Pervez Mushrraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz to withdraw agriculture income tax as the farm sector is already reeling under acute economic stagnancy.
He said the agriculture sector is already paying no less than 70 indirect taxes and paying enormous price on farm inputs and it would not be able to sustain additional burden. If corrective measures were not taken the agriculture would perish resulting in national economic disaster.
He said the rural economy due to poor availability of water, unjust distribution of water has brought the rural economy on its knee resulting in increasing number of suicides cases and aggravating the law and order situation.
He suggested that a high level economic commission should be constituted to re-survey the entire situation of rural economy and present its recommendations on farm income, inputs prices and fertiliser manufacturing companies earning hefty profit which could be judged by the balance sheet of Engro Chemical Pakistan Ltd indicating a net profit of Rs 1,149 million during the nine months.
He also demanded that free import policy of agriculture commodities should be withdrawn specially at the time of harvest in the country. Quoting the example of onion he said onion was imported from Afghanistan in large quantity when Sindh the major onion-producing province is expected to surpass the last year production of 0.661 million metric tonnes by over 50,000 tonnes as per Sindh government statistics released here. He said Pakistan has only exported 650 tonnes of onion to India till today at the rate of around 255 dollars per tonne while 2,000 tonnes of onion being imported from China.
He said government should improve its export policies with regard to agriculture commodities by providing export facilities to growers.