ISLAMABAD, July 12: The government has decided to thoroughly modernise the existing agriculture infrastructure in order to increase farm productivity.

Official sources told Dawn here on Saturday that a high-level meeting held on Monday last reached a consensus that all possible financial and technical assistance would be sought from the World Bank, Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) to increase agricultural yields and improve farmers’ profitability.

During the meeting, which was presided over by Minister for Food and Agriculture Sardar Yar Muhammad Rind and attended by Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz, former President Sardar Farooq Leghari, Commerce Minister Humayun Akhtar, Minister of State for Food and Agriculture, Sikandar Hayat Khan Bosan and a number of ruling party MNAs, it was decided to prepare an “Agriculture Vision” to realize 6 per cent agriculture growth within three years.

This new agriculture vision, sources said, would be finalized in light of the recently concluded G-8 meeting in which France had decided to reduce and eventually eliminate subsidy to its farmers. The recommendations of the Cancun (Mexico) meeting of the developing countries would also be taken into considerations to improve agricultural infrastructure and ensure the availability of water and better machinery.

“There is a need for dedicated export and new marketing entities, which the government would create with a view to achieving better yield in major crops,” said a participant of the meeting.

The main features of the agriculture vision would be to offer more agricultural loans and ensure the availability of better seeds. “For this purpose, the government is considering to establish a new banking institution to offer loans to the farmers,” said a participant adding that this institution would have nothing to do with the Zarai Traqqiati Bank.

Sources said that agriculture vision would seek to offer additional fiscal and non-fiscal incentives to the farmers to bring more area under cultivation and at the same time to increase their productivity.

This vision, sources said, would be linked to the poverty alleviation programme specially in the rural areas where 49pc of country’s labour force is employed.

Agriculture sector has grown at an average rate of 4.5 per cent per annum during in 1990s. Over the last three years in general but the first two years (2000-01 and 2001- 02) of the new millennium in particular, Pakistan has witnessed crippling drought which badly affected its agriculture. Resultantly, overall agricultural growth turned negative in these two years.