KARACHI: Chairman of National Business Group Pakistan and President Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum (PBIF), Mian Zahid Hussain has said the agriculture policies should be changed to enhance the interests of farmers, reduce migration, curriculum should be altered to attract youth to this sector, reforms should be introduced to reduce prices and pave the way for local and foreign investment.

He said that the import bill for agricultural products is rising while the issue of food security is also becoming grave.

More than half of the population of a country with fertile land and the world’s best canal system covering almost 25,000 kilometers facing malnutrition as agriculture production has been declined for years, he said.

Hussain said that agriculture imports during the first two months of the current fiscal have almost doubled than the corresponding year to US 1.5 billion dollars while the import of urea will also require a hefty amount of foreign exchange.

He said that agriculture is the backbone of the economy but it has never attracted the attention of the policymakers which has resulted in its continued fall resulting in a serious food security problem. Farmers never get proper loans or benefit from research resulting in collapse of important crops resulting in imports, he said, adding that an agricultural recovery programme is needed to tackle increasing population and counter rising food prices in the international market.

Promotion of agriculture will also boost the textile sector which spends billions every year to import cotton, he added.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022