'Agriculture sector is attracting special focus and sizeable financial support by the present provincial and federal governments.' Fayyaz Bashir, Secretary Agriculture Punjab averred this while chairing one-day seminar to review the progress of projects being funded under Agriculture Sector Loan Project-11 (ASLP-II) in Punjab province here on Sunday.
He said that progress of all the seven projects of agriculture department being funded under ASLP-II was fairly good and the government would continue to encourage execution and implementation of projects through community participation. The secretary emphasised to make all efforts to achieve targets of these projects for which more than Rs4.3 billion had been made available under ASLP-II Program.
Referring to the Project Biosaline, he underlined that two million acres of land was affected with salinity and water logging and hectic efforts were required to reclaim/rehabilitate 200,000 (two hundred thousand acres of saline land as per target of the project.
Earlier, the project managers gave detailed presentations about targets, activities and outcome of these projects including up-gradation of pesticides laboratories, Orange Research & Development, Integrated Pest Management Biosaline-Il project and establishment of Agricultural Marketing Information System and Institute of Punjab Agricultural Marketing.