The minimum support price of Virginia tobacco has fixed at Rs 117/kg for the current season with consultation of growers, tobacco exporting and manufacturing companies and members of Pakistan Tobacco Board with 13 percent increase as compared to last year.
The growers and tobacco companies have developed consensus on fixing of prices in a meeting held here at Pakistan Tobacco Board (PTB) chaired by Commissioner Minor Crop/P&D Food Security and Research, Ministry of Food and Security, Dr Mohammad Aslam here on Wednesday PTB secretary, Noman Bashir, members tobacco manufacturing and exporting companies, representatives of growers, and members Cost of Production were present in the meeting.
The participants supported the fixing of prices of Virginia tobacco as per cost of production, which could be beneficial for both growers, and tobacco companies. They stressed for yielding quality varieties of tobacco as 80 percent of Non-Recommended Varieties sowing in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The province is produced about 98.9 percent tobacco, while contributing Rs 60 billion to Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) annually.
Following the growers concerns about fixing of unrealistic prices of tobacco for past so many years, the PTB has taken all stakeholders on board before fixing on new prices, said Noman Bashir. He further said that the co-ordination and co-relation between board, growers, and companies' was mandatory for improvement of tobacco crop in the province. PTB secretary said that our utmost priority to maximum facilitate the farmers and provide hefty prices to them for only cultivation of recommended variety not NRV.
The tobacco companies' have expressed grave concerns over yielding of Non-Recommended Varieties (NRV) of Tobacco in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and asked the growers to only cultivate quality tobacco to yield production. While announcing the new prices of Virginia tobacco, Dr Mohammad Aslam said that the system couldn't be improved without procurement of quality tobacco.
Unfortunately, he said that about 80 percent tobacco producing old variety of the tobacco, and asked the growers and tobacco companies to jointly workout for yielding quality hybrid seed in the country. He expressed the hope that the quality and production of tobacco will be improved after announcing tobacco support prices in the province.
He said that the NRV is not beneficial for both growers and companies, therefore there was needed to contain sowing of old variety and only cultivate high hybrid seed.
After the passage of 18th constitutional amendments, he said that the system would be decentralised through which the provinces were more powerful to bring legislative changes and strengthen departments. Later, Dr Mohammad Aslam distributed shields amongst the best tobacco exporting companies, including Philip Morris, Khyber Tobacco Company, and Pakistan Tobacco Company.