PESHAWAR: The agriculturists have welcome the incentives announced by the federal government in the budget for the year 2016-17 and expected to revive the agriculture sector.
Appreciating the decrease in prices of fertilizers and DAP, they said that the cut in prices would facilitate the poor farmers and would reduce financial load on them. Prof Dr Ishfaq of Agriculture University said that the farmers were earlier forced to purchase fertilizers especially DAP on a huge prices thus leaving no margin for them to meet their expenses out of spending.
He said that the agriculture sector was backbone of the country and it deserved to be given the same incentives as announced by the federal government to make -the country’s economy stronger besides give a relief to poor farmers, adding that reduction in agriculture tubewell per unit tariff would also reduce burden on farmers.
Dr Ishfaq said Pakistan was fifth largest cotton producer in the world and 3rd largest exporter of raw cotton, adding that cultivation of Bt cotton crop in recent years greatly affected the crop as well as indigenous crop seed therefore the government should have to pay attention to this sector.
Adnan Basit Baloch, an agriculturist from DI Khan, also appreciated the incentives for agriculture sector in the fiscal budget and said it would give a sigh of relief to poor farmers across the country.
He said the power loadshedding coupled with cost of per unit of tubewell during peak hours were previously exerting heavy financial burden on poor farmers but the relief as announced by the federal government in federal budget would reduced this burden.
