Farmers furious over ‘too little, too late’ fiscal space for agriculture

LAHORE: Farmers’ organisations on Friday slated the federal government for doing “too little, too late” in terms of creating fiscal space for agriculture sector in its overhyped budget 2020-21.

The federal government has not been able to announce any new initiative for the development of agriculture sector, which is backbone of national economy.

Ibrahim Mughal, President Agri-Forum Pakistan, said, “The budget allocation for previous projects have also been reduced. In such financial support, how can agriculture sector smoothly perfume in the challenges posed by food security?”

“Keeping in view poor performance of federal government and meager budgetary support for farmers, it has become clear that government was trying to make Pakistan a consumer market. This is part of a conspiracy hatched for making farming sector uncompetitive in the international market and unviable for the local farmers,” Mughal said.

He said it was an irony that almost nothing had been sanctioned for agriculture in the federal budget despite the fact that hardworking farmers made this sector one of the top performers.

Agri-Forum leader said the government poorly managed fertiliser sector in the country as prices of major fertiliser were on the rise. “Despite the fact the subsidy given to manufacturers never trickled down to farmers, the government announced in this budget to financially support fertilizer plants of two major producers,” he said.

Khalid Mehmood Khokhar, President Pakistan Kissan Ittehad, lambasted the federal government for their inability to give due share to farming sector in budget allocation. “It is a pity that the government is least bothered for the development of agriculture sector, which is the mainstay of economy being a food producer and major raw material provider for the industry and exports,” Khokhar said.

He particularly denounced government’s decision to reduce subsidy to farmers on Tariff Differential for Agriculture Tubewells in Balochistan from Rs8 billion to Rs3 billion. Khokhar termed this act an anti-farmer step saying agriculture of the province would be badly hurt due to closure of tubewells. “The poor and resourceless farmers of Balochistan cannot bear the high cost of electricity for running tubewells,” he said.

Khokhar said the federal government was in denial mode, while dealing with the menace of devastating locusts in the country. “The provision of ample resources for facing challenge of locust has been an issue for last several years and the government failed to meet the farmers’ expectations as it did not do enough to protect them against the onslaught of locust that had already hit them hard,” he said.

He also regretted the government failed to allocate greater amount for Credit Guarantee Scheme for Small Farmers, Crop Loan Insurance Scheme and Livestock Insurance Scheme.

Dr Zafar Hayat of Pakistan Farmers Bureau said despite no or low support from the government, the agriculture sector performed relatively better and grew by 2.67 percent over the previous year. “This has been achieved despite disastrous performance of cotton crop because of the government’s inaction and least interest,” Hayat said.

He added that the PTI government did not take a single step for providing quality seeds to cotton growers this year and there was no measure was announced for this purpose in the federal budget.

Ahmad Jawad, Secretary General (Federal) Businessmen Panel, said a 2.8 percent agriculture growth target set in the budget 2020-21 was utterly disappointing for the growers community, while this budget was devoid of any new relief packages except for an allocation of Rs10 billion to fight locusts.

“In the wake of pandemic, services and industrial sectors almost collapsed; however, in this crisis agriculture is the only hope to uplift the dwindling economy and we had expected the government to take extra measures for this sector in the budget and set a target of at least 3.5 percent but we are utterly disappointed,” Jawad said in a statement.

“Similarly a stagnant exports target shows efforts to increase exports are highly unlikely. The only new thing is the slogan ‘Look towards Africa’.”

He said there had been no facilitation measures in the budget to enhance horticulture exports, which could play a pivotal role in country exports.