MULTAN, Jan 31: The Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock has finally notified the expansion of the import list of wheat herbicides under generic name of form-16.

Through a notification issued on Saturday, the Minfal allowed import of three popular wheat herbicides under form-16 which till now were on the restricted list of import under brand name only (form-1).

The herbicides now placed on form-16 are Fenoxaprop-P-Ethyle, MCPA and Coldinofop Propagyle. Allowing their free import under generic name, the ministry has however put some conditions for import: the products will be imported in formulated form only, the composition and recipe of the formulated product will be the same as were in the case of form-1 and the importer will import the products in retail packs of 1kg or 1 litre only under his label and warranty.

The condition of import in retail packs, however, has surprised the interested importers as according to the recently amended Agricultural Pesticides Rules through SRO-21/2004, the importers of pesticides and herbicides would now have to pass on the products to distributors or dealers (as the case may be) in retail packs under their own label and warranty and not as is reflected from the notification that the herbicides now placed on the form-16 will have to be imported in retail packs.

The state minister for agriculture, Sikander Hayat Bosan, had announced in a press conference on December 4 last that the government had placed the three popular wheat herbicides on form- 16 in order to ensure their availability in abundance and, that too, on competitive prices to the farmers for the wheat season of 2003-2004.

However, the authorities at Minfal kept lingering on the matter under one pretext or the other in order to, what insiders claimed, give benefit an influential importer. Wheat growers need herbicides to get rid of the unnecessary herbs/weeds from the fields after first irrigation, and, therefore, these products usually come in use in January as afterwards their use can prove injurious rather than beneficial.

Therefore, according to some stakeholders the timing of the issuance of notification is questionable as now the time has been over to import and then market the herbicides in the current wheat season.