The government will be requested to announce a special package for agriculture sector in budget for the next fiscal year to help small farmers and improve the agriculture output, speaker National Assembly Asad Qaiser stated on Wednesday.
The speaker National Assembly and MNA Fakhar Imam jointly chaired the sub-committee of the Special Committee on Agriculture products as well as formed sectoral groups and tasked them to come up with the proposals in the next meeting for moving forward.
The meeting was held with agenda to promote collaborative linkages between the special committee on agricultural products and agriculture universities faculties as well as to promote the agriculture sector.
Asad Qaiser stated that for the first time, members across party lines and from all provinces have been brought at one platform to develop a strategy to bring about improvement in the sector and, if required, some legal changes would be done.
Some members of the committee including the convener regretted that the country is importing pulses despite being an agrarian economy and this is largely because of absence of research and adoption of new technology. They added that agriculture is the only sector that could help improve the balance of payment position and reduce debt burden in a very short time through increase in exportable surplus.
The purpose of the meeting was to devise a strategy to increase productivity, especially exportable surplus, and protect the farmers against the interests of multilaterals.
Fakhar Imam said, "For the first time this kind of discussion has taken place from the Parliament, and farming should be the focus of the country now."
A presentation was also made to the committee highlighting the factors responsible for taking the agriculture sector to collapse after 60s and led to deterioration of food quality.
Chairman Pedaver Private Limited, Asif Sharif in a presentation stated that the current pattern in farm sector is against natural system. He added that higher cost of production and lower quality led to decline in output of the sector and poverty for the farmers. He said that challenges in the sector are poverty alleviation, stunted growth for the people attached to the sector in particular and other in general, and to make available production of industrial raw material at competitive prices and quality.