20 January 2004	Tuesday	27 Ziqa'ad 1424

MULTAN, Jan 19: The pesticides and herbicides on the negative list of America, China, the European Union, Japan and the Organization for Economic Cooperation for Development cannot be imported in the country , according to amendments recently made in the Agricultural Pesticides Rules, 1973.

A source at the federal ministry of food, agriculture and livestock told Dawn that a notification in this regard was likely to be made public in the next few days.

According to the draft of the notification, importers and formulators of the pesticides would have to give a declaration in black and white to the effect that the imported chemistry was not on the negative list in case the information was not available about its status in the countries concerned.

The notification was supposed to be effected by November 1, 2003. The amendments in the pesticides rules are being introduced in consultation with the Agricultural Pesticides Technical Advisory Committee.

The other salient features of the draft notification are that its implementation will disallow bulk sale of the pesticides as the importers, formulators and manufacturers will have to undertake repacking and refilling of the pesticides and herbicides in retail packing under their own label and supervision at a plant equipped with a laboratory and registered with the plant protection department of the federal government.

Label of a product should have its name, the date of expiry, price and address and telephone number(s) of the importer, formulator and manufacturer. The products can only be passed on to the distributor, dealer or retailer (as the case may be) in the retail packing.

The importers, formulators and manufacturers of the pesticides and herbicides should forward warranty of quality, quantity and ingredients (shown weight by weight including active ingredients, solvents, emulsifiers, stabilizers and all impurities beyond 0.1 per of weight in kg/litre), besides efficacy and strength.

When discussed, analysts said the amendments were welcoming and would have a positive impact in the pesticides business to rectify its flaws that opened doors for the exploitation of the farming community. However, they pointed out that the draft of the notification was not completely in line with the recommendation of the 36th APTAC meeting held on May 31 last year.

They said for instance the proposed notification was silent on the price issue as recommended by the APTAC that the importers of the pesticides should give the same price on the label which they had written in the invoice while paying the government duties, including sales tax. They said the farming community could yet be exploited by maintaining the price differential between invoice and the label.

The analysts further pointed out that the APTAC had recommended standardizing the packing of a pesticide or herbicide in 250ml, 500ml or 1,000ml in order to end deceptive packing of 450ml or 900ml as the growers took them for 500ml and 1,000ml, respectively, but could not get the desired results when they applied them in the field for being less than the quantity they assumed enough for an acre or so.