March 27, 2003	Thursday	Muharram 23, 1424

ISLAMABAD, March 26: The government has decided to announce support price for only two major crops — wheat and cotton — owing to finance ministry’s stiff resistance to issue support prices for nine main crops.

Official sources told Dawn on Wednesday Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali in his first cabinet meeting had directed that farmers of nine major crops should be encouraged through support prices to enhance country’s agriculture produce.

These crops included wheat, cotton, rice, sugarcane, potato, onions, gram, non-traditional oilseeds and green chillies.

Following the comprehensive inter-ministerial consultations, the Ministry of Finance took the stand that support price mechanism was strongly opposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The ministries concerned were asked to prepare support prices for four crops namely wheat, cotton, rice and sugarcane. It was, however, finally decided that support price would be announced only for wheat and cotton crops while indicative price would be announced for sugarcane and rice crops.

The support price for wheat has already been approved by the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet recently and maintained last year’s rate of Rs300 per maund.

The support price for cotton would be announced over the next couple of weeks, the sources said.

The government had done away with the support price mechanism for crops other than rice, wheat, sugarcane and cotton in the late 1990s but continued to support farmers of these major crops.

The previous military government, however, also removed sugarcane and rice from the support price mechanism on an agreement with the IMF. Prime Minister Mir Jamali wanted to revive the mechanism for all main crops but in vain.

The sources said that in the absence of an agriculture policy, the sector has become stagnant and it could not go beyond 25 per cent of the GDP despite the country being a agriculture country.

Meanwhile, the Federal Minister for Food and Agriculture told a meeting of Pakistan Oilseed Development Board on Wednesday that concrete steps would be taken to increase production of olive in NWFP, Potohar and Balochistan areas whereas canola and sunflower in Punjab and Sindh.