Wheat crisis attributed to ill-conceived policies

Executive Committee of Sindh Abadgar Board (SAB) attributed the present wheat crises to ill-conceived policies of the government and gross mismanagement in food department.
The committee, which met here on Saturday under the chairmanship of Abdul Majeed Nizamani, expressed apprehensions that if agriculture policies prepared under the influence of the international donor agencies continue, Pakistan will turned into an importing country of agriculture commodities and would be importing wheat and cotton along with edible oil in future.
He said the ill-conceived government policies which includes late crushing of sugarcane, extremely high prices of agriculture inputs, continuous increase in diesel prices and poor availability of DAP had negative impact on wheat crop and made it difficult for the wheat growers to achieve wheat production target.
The meeting observed that this year due to delay in late crushing of sugarcane, shortfall in wheat target area was computed at 11 percent.
They said that the wheat cultivated areas last year recorded a decline of 17 percent, which indicates that the overall decline in wheat area would be around 28 percent.
As such it is feared that the wheat shortage would continue even after the harvest of the current wheat crop unless imported wheat reaches the market.
Referring to price hike of wheat and wheat flour prices the committee was of the view that instead of shifting the blame to district government, the food department should take immediate steps to bring equilibrium between demand and supply to streamline the price structure.
The meeting demanded that a new agriculture policy should be tailored to face the challenges posed by the WTO regime, which is now around the corner in consultation with the farming community to ensure sustainable development in agriculture sector, which is on the brink of disaster.
The meeting also demanded that the sugar sector should also be made economically viable by lowering the GST percentage on sugar production and by ensuring a fair price to growers, timely payment of their produce and quality premium and implementation of Sugar Factory Control Act in letter and spirit.