ISLAMABAD, March 16: The food and agriculture minister, Khair Mohammad Junejo, has stressed the need for disbursing the agricultural credit to the small farmers and increase in the allocation of credit to the farmers.

Presiding over a meeting here on Saturday to review the bottleneck involved in the disbursement of agriculture credit, the minister said though the government had increased the allocation from Rs49.2 billion to Rs60 billion, an increase of 21.9 per cent, there was a need to further increase it.

Mr Junejo also instructed the bankers that the loans should be given for wheat graders.

He appreciated the banks which were giving loans for the project financing, model farming and development purposes and urged them to give also loan for the storage of wheat seed particularly to the small farmers so that their losses could be minimized.

The meeting emphasized the need for an immediate increase in the allocations, as the farmers’ credit requirement has increased over the years.

The participants of the meeting noted that during July 2001 to January 2002, Rs26.243 billion were disbursed against Rs22.42 billion last year, showing an increase of 17 per cent.

“Out of the total disbursement, Rs22 billion was given for support production activities and Rs4.2 billion to finance development activities as compared to Rs17.8 billion and Rs4.6 billion respectively during July 2001 to January 2001.”

During the meeting, the representatives of different banks informed the minister that sufficient allocations had been made for agricultural credit during the Kharif season and efforts would be made to achieve the targets.

Meanwhile, a separate special committee meeting discussed in detail the storage facilities for wheat during the next season.

The meeting was presided over by the adviser to the chief executive on food, agriculture Shafi Niaz.

The meeting discussed the ways to reduce incidental and other costs of wheat. Mr Niaz stressed the need for adopting fool-proof methods of transportation and storage of wheat. He also called for paying due attention to protect wheat from exposing it to harmful conditions.

The meeting was also attended by food and agriculture ministers of Punjab and NWFP and high officials of commerce and finance ministries TCP, Passco.