NA committee demands power tariff relief for farmers also

ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly (NA) Special Committee on Agricultural Products unanimously adopted a resolution on Thursday, demanding the federal government provide relief in energy prices for farmers, similar to the one provided to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and large-scale manufacturing (LSM) industry.

The committee demanded that relief in energy prices should be provided to the hardest-hit farmers in the month of November 2020, so that farmers could benefit from the relief in the current sowing season.

The committee, through its resolution, expressed grave concern over lack of any action taken in pursuance of the prime minister’s directions to provide relief to farmers on tube-wells power bills across Pakistan.

The meeting was held with National Assembly Speaker Asad Qaisar in the chair to discuss minimum support price for wheat, strategy for enhancing production of wheat and other Rabi crops.

The meeting was attended by Federal Minister for National Food Security and Research Syed Fakhar Imam, Federal Minister for Economic Affairs, Khusro Bakhtiar, Balochistan Agriculture Minister, Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) chairman, Punjab Food secretary, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Agriculture secretary, Pakistan Agricultural Storage & Services Corporation (PASSCO) managing director and members of the committee.

The NA speaker told the meeting the meaningful and timely incentives for wheat growers were crucial for Pakistan’s national food security. A significantly large majority of the committee members recommended that the minimum support price for wheat should be fixed at Rs1800/40-kg while members from Sindh recommended Rs2,000/40-kg as minimum support price for wheat.

The members highlighted that lack of decent profitability in wheat production would deter farmers from cultivating wheat crop, resulting in Pakistan’s national food security crisis. The members stressed that undue delay in fertilizer subsidy disbursement mechanism would adversely affect the cumulative output of wheat and the country would be forced to import expensive wheat next year.

The committee recommended that each province should immediately share its proposed subsidy disbursement mechanism with the Ministry of National Food Security and Research for onward submission to the Ministry of Finance for release of the funds.

Speaker Asad Qaiser promised that the matter would be taken up with the Ministry of Finance in the next meeting of the committee within one week. On the request of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, the committee recommended that Punjab Seed Corporation (PSC) and the Sindh government should provide wheat seed to Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan within one week as per agreement, and according to the demand in order to avoid potential wheat crisis.

The Balochistan agriculture department said that keeping in view province’s agricultural landscape, the federal government should extend a helping hand to Balochistan. He regretted that subsidy on tube-wells bills and funds for polarization of tube-wells, despite an announcement, were not released.

The federal minister for National Food Security and Research, officials of the ministry and provincial governments briefed the panel on current situation, cost, import, support price and interventions for enhancing wheat production next year. The committee would meet next Friday to review implementation status of its recommendations.