[Pakistan] Poverty down from 32 to 26%, 5.5 million new jobs created: minister

from The Pakistan Daily Times

By Zulfiqar Ghuman and Irfan Ghauri

ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly’s standing committee on food and agriculture on Tuesday criticised the government for failing to implement its decision of procuring wheat from farmers at support price.

“The state promised the people to procure wheat from farmers at support price because if farmers did not get the price pledged to them, they will opt not to cultivate the crop in future leading to a wheat crisis and the country would lose self sufficiency in wheat,” Makhdoom Ahmed Anwar Alam, the chairman of the committee, said.

The committee members from the government as well as the opposition said the government allowed the increase in input prices and reduced the number of purchase centres, creating chaos among farmers. They said the government announced the support price of Rs 415 per 40 kilograms, but farmers in Sindh were offered Rs 360 to Rs 370, which did not even cover the input cost of the crop.

The committee decided to meet the prime minister and convey the concerns of the farmers. They also demanded a ban on wheat imports and asked for taking every possible step to ensure that farmers got the price they were promised. Syed Zafar Ali Shah and Pir Aftab Shah Jilani of the Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians complained that the Sindh government has politicised the procurement process and politicians included in the procurement committees, were patronising their political supporters and victimising opponents.

Taking notice of the complaint, the chairman told the Sindh Food Department to ensure transparency in procurement.

The committee was informed that the government had fixed 21.5 million tonnes as the wheat target this year but it was expected that the country would produce 20.5 million tonnes, which was less than the target set. Procurement in Sindh started on April 15 and 4000 tonnes had been procured so far. In Punjab, the procurement will start on April 20.

“There are serious flaws in the system and market perceptions need to be changed,” Ismail Qureshi, the Food and Agriculture secretary said. He said the issue had been taken up with the Economic Coordination Committee of the cabinet and important decisions were expected in a few days. He said 2.2 million tonnes of wheat was left over from the previous year in government stocks.

He said that on the directions of the prime minister, the Punjab government was to procure a minimum of 3 million tonnes, Sindh 0.7 million tonnes and PASSCO 1.30 million tonnes of wheat from farmers.

The government has decided that there would be no restrictions on inter-district and inter-provincial movement of wheat. The banks were also directed to provide a cash margin of 90:10 to the private sector for wheat procurement.

He said that since the prices of wheat remained stable this year, the private sector had not come to purchase wheat, which was adding to the farmers’ difficulties.