Under Prime Minister's Agriculture Emergency Programme Punjab government has allocated Rs10 billion for the promotion of Sunflower crop across the Punjab. Official Sources told Business Recorder on Sunday that under the programme government was providing subsidy of Rs5,000 per acre to the sunflower growers in Punjab. Special attention under the plan would be accorded on enhancing the acreage of sunflower crop aimed at lessening the import of edible oil and produce maximum edible oil for catering the domestic needs. As many as 210,000 acres of land would be brought under sunflower crop in the Province. The sunflower crop will be cultivated on 4,680 acres in four tehsils of Sialkot district. In Sialkot tehsil 550 acres, Daska tehsil 800, Pasrur tehsil 2,780 and in Sambrial tehsil 550 acres would be brought under sunflower crop. At present only 34 percent edible oil is being produced within country while 66 percent was being imported for catering the domestic needs for which government was spending huge foreign exchange on the import of edible oil every year.
The demand of edible oil was increasing rapidly due to the fast increase in population of the country and under the situation extra efforts were being made for cultivating oil seed crops including sunflower for minimizing the import of edible oil.
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