IN the run-up to the federal budget due early next month, the farmers have more fears than hopes. Their representative bodies plan pre-budget protests to ensure that their problems are not conveniently ignored by the policymakers.
Pakistan Kissan Ittehad (PKI), the most active of them all, has given a call for protest on May 23 in front of the Punjab Assembly to remind both federal and provincial governments of its long standing demands, which it has presented on more than one occasion. The PKI chief Khalid Khokhar, complaining some administrative pressure on him and his colleagues to abstain from protests, promises to be there ‘because it is a matter of life and death for farmers’.
Elaborating their expectations from the next budget, farmer bodies demand: removal of GST on all agriculture inputs and support price for more crops in order to stabilise output prices, even for a temporary phase. The GST adds to the cost of production, deters inputs application and keeps productivity low.
Farmers claim that the official collection of around Rs43bn in GST pales to insignificance when compared with farm productivity losses. Only this year, the farmers say they lost Rs170bn in cotton production. The potatoes growers lost Rs150bn to both productivity and price crash and still another Rs48bn were lost by paddy growers, according to their respective claims.
“The Indian government, despite giving billions of dollars subsidy, also provides support price for 32 crops. Local farmers question why Pakistan has restricted itself to support price of only wheat and an indicative price for sugarcane”
The second demand of the farming community is to widen support price mechanism for all those crops that are in trouble, especially rice and cotton.
The Indian government, despite giving billions of dollars subsidy, also provides support price for 32 crops. Local farmers question that why Pakistan has restricted itself to support price of only wheat and indicative price for sugarcane. They stress that the government should not only announce in the budget the support price of crops but also spare money for the Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) for market intervention.
For long term measures, they suggest that the government should set priorities for dealing with climatic change; last year, it literally swept the cotton crop off its feet, leaving the farmers poorer.
The government should deal with agriculture as an economic and business issue and not merely as a social one. So far, most of its policies and subsidies packages have targeted smaller farmers — less than 12.5 acres or less than five acres.
Smaller farmers are surviving on subsistence farming, and are not a significant part of the market or trade. Farming economics is the real issue that needs government’s attention.
Finally, an independent Kissan Commission should be set up at the federal level that could continuously monitor production and trade issues and suggest corrective measures round the year. The commission should also come up with new rural development models.
Published in Dawn, Business & Finance weekly, May 23rd, 2016*
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