Pakistan Agriculture Research Council's (PARC) Board of Governors (BoG) approved Rs 3.08 billion budget for the current financial year 2019-20, which includes Rs 2.3 billion to meet development expenditures.
An official said that out of the total outlay, Rs 0.7 billion have been allocated for non-development expenditures and Rs 2.3 billion would be spent on ongoing and new development projects. He said the budget was approved in the 44th meeting of the PARC's BOG at the PARC headquarters, which was presided over by Federal Minister for National Food Security and Research (NFS&R) Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtiar. The BOG also approved increase in conveyance allowance of disabled persons, said a senior official of PARC.
During the meeting, Bakhtiar said uplift of agriculture sector was one of the top priority areas of the government. The country is currently facing degradation and depletion of natural resources (water, the most important one) due to climate change impacts, resource conflicts, rapid urbanization, malnutrition and hunger & poverty.
He also said the country was currently facing food trade deficit, as being an agriculture country major chunk of exports was linked with better performance of agriculture sector. Now Pakistan has also transformed itself from food exporting country to net food importing country. "To address these issues, agriculture sector needs proper attention at all levels for bringing improvement in productivity," he said, adding that this would not only uplift the livelihood of resource poor farmers but would also help in export promotion and import substitution strategies of the economy.
Chairman PARC Muhammad Azeem Khan informed the board about taking various steps for improvement of performance and efficiency of PARC system. He also briefed the meeting about in-house research and new innovations through technical divisions and PSDP-funded ongoing and new approved projects.
Member Finance PARC Dr Turab Haider presented budget before the meeting.
Secretary MNSF&R Dr Muhammad Hashim Popalzai said it was expected that the food policy implementation would help in the promotion of value added food production while creating a new class of agricultural businesspersons. As a result the availability of diversified food products will increase that will help improve the economic access of food to the socially deprived communities living in marginal and remote areas. The BOG also discussed research priorities and various issues of agriculture sector which include production planning, cost of productions, crops scenario, policies for research, seed purity and quality, technologies, innovations and future planning.