President Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum (PBIF), Mian Zahid Hussain has said that the government must come forward to save rice sector and provide incentives to growers. While expressing concern over falling rice exports, he said rice farmers deserve all the facilities including affordable seeds, pesticides, electricity, water and dryers while they should be given direct subsidy as indirect subsidies are less effective.
Our competitors were able to raise their exports by benefiting from market-oriented or demand-driven research, said Mian Zahid Hussain. He noted that rice exports have witnessed a fall of 8.60 percent during financial year of 2016 by fetching 2.035 billion dollars which should be a matter of concern for the stakeholders and the government should intervene immediately by forming a separate Rice Export Company from private sector to handle all rice related issue.
Pakistan has missed annual rice export targets for five years necessitating government intervention before it is too late as 3,861,406 metric tonnes of rice was exported in 2016 as compare to the corresponding period in which 4,262,216 metric tonnes of rice was exported, he said. He noted that the highest shipments recorded in 2009-10 when earnings from rice exports stood at $2.2bn. Since then, the exports have remained almost stagnant and now it is going down.