Farmers Associates Pakistan (FAP) has strongly condemned government proposal to impose value -added tax (VAT) on agriculture products and related inputs and warned countrywide protests against it. In a specially convened meeting, Dr M Tariq Bucha, Director and Chief Co-ordinator of the FAP resenting the idea said that it would totally kill the farmer and cause irreparable damage to agriculture sector by making the inputs more expensive.
It would result in the prices of agriculture produce to increase adding to the miseries of both the farmers and consumers who are already under extreme economic depression because of poor and inefficient wheat policy and large outstanding payments from sugar mills and continuous increase in the prices of essential items in the market, the meeting observed.
Dr Bucha, who is also a FAP spokesman, urged upon government to discuss VAT imposition with the farmers through their representative bodies. It is right time that government should resist unjustified pressures and being a democratic government, should consider the welfare of the people of Pakistan as their paramount priority.
Agriculture is a sector, which can be described as golden egg laying hen, which the present government in connivance with IMF want to slaughter and get all the golden eggs at one time. They are sadly mistaken and need to straighten their direction and approach, the spokesman observed.
FAP spokesman said if the government despite being democratic took dictatorial steps by imposing VAT, farmers will be constrained to resort to country wide protest along with other sectors and for that the government alone will be responsible. He further added that government had already caused more than 20 billion rupees loss to farmers by making huge profits through extraordinary and unwarranted high prices of oil, fuel and through tax on usage of utilities and withdrawal of subsidies on essential inputs. Why does the government not reduce its non-development expenses instead of resorting to IMF guided pressurised coercive measures, Bucha questioned.