Potato export to protect farmers’ interests

LAHORE
THE Punjab government has taken measures for initiating export of potatoes to protect the interests of the farmers who are facing problems due to price crash of the vegetable, said provincial minister for Agriculture here on Sunday.
Talking to a group of farmers here, Dr Farrukh Javaid said that export of potatoes would be started this month as exporters secured orders from Malaysia and Sri Lanka. He said that potato production in Punjab was registered at 3.7 million ton this year which is one million ton more than the output of last year.
Owing to bumper crop of potato, he said, government has allowed export of the potatoes.
The minister said that all hurdles in the export of potatoes were being removed to expedite trade of the vegetables. He maintained that efforts were also made to launch export of potatoes to Russia. We are taking measures to remove bottleneck in export of potatoes to Russia, which is a big market, he observed.