Islamabad, Pakistan: Pakistan Federal Cabinet has approved agriculture relief package. The package will be announced at Kisan Convention including announcement of Agricultural credit facilities for farmers.
According to details, Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif chaired Cabinet meeting here today morning and Finance Minister Ishaq Dar presented a comprehensive package for agriculture development in the country. The Federal Cabinet had been deliberating the agriculture relief package and gave approval.
According to sources, package covers incentives to farmers to grow more cotton, sugar cane and also try to produce innovative products and special incentives will be given to farmers in this regard.Pakistani farmers have been facing serious crises regarding payment for cotton from powerful group of industrialists and with the passage of time they left growing cotton in the country as much as they had been growing just 20 year ago. The issue is same with sugar cane because payments from factory owners was difficult to get and weight issue was another a big crises because factory owners always offer less weight to farmer comparing to the actual. The weigh machines are controlled by factory owners and industrialists in Pakistan and farmer have no choice but to accept weight what factory owners offer because product is standing outside gates of factories and farmer can not come back and try to sell it in local market where they get more less rates because whole system exploit farmers in this regard.
Pakistan is principally an agrarian society and its natural resources are arable land and water. About 25% of Pakistan’s agriculture accounts for about 21% of GDP and employs about 43% of the labor force. In Pakistan, the most agricultural province is Punjab where wheat and cotton are the most grown.
Expensive and inadequate supply of agricultural inputs including seeds, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, mechanized machinery have become costly but also inadequate and irregular in supply. Farmers are poor and they have low level of income. Agricultural credit facilities are not common in Pakistan. Credit that can facilitate agriculture is not available easily. According to experts, farmers in Pakistan live in debts, grow in debts and die in debts. It indicates that financial position of Pakistani farmer is weak and poor. According to one of “Pakistan Human Development Report” about 57.4% poor are working for feudal-lords without wages.
