ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Peoples Party has termed withdrawal of subsidy on fertilisers “a callous and inhuman decision and a conspiracy against poor and under-privileged rural population” while the government has defended the move, saying the subsidy had been withdrawn after the amount allocated for it exhausted.

Former president and PPP chief Asif Ali Zardari said in a statement issued by the party’s media centre that the government would only compensate the farmers of Punjab, a measure harmful to inter-provincial harmony.

Only to “achieve cheap political mileage”, he said, the government had on one hand withdrawn the subsidy of Rs400 per bag on fertiliser and, on the other, was secretly compensating farmers of their own political constituency.

“The federal government is playing with fire as such measures will create provincial rifts and disharmony,” Mr Zardari warned.

It will create a sense of deprivation among the people of three smaller provinces with far-reaching consequences.

He demanded immediate reversal of the decision and said that the PPP would stand by farmers of the entire country. The news came as a big surprise for most in the agriculture sector as they were not expecting that the government under foreign pressure would go to such extent as to harm the backbone of the national economy, he said.

As a result of the withdrawal of the subsidy, he said, the share of the agriculture sector in the national economy and its capacity to drive growth and development in the country would diminish drastically.

Mr Zardari noted that agriculture experts pointed out that the upcoming crops of sugarcane and maize would be critically affected by the ‘thoughtless’ decision which, he warned, would severely affect the agriculture sector and drastically raise poverty level in rural areas.

Meanwhile, Minister for National Food Security and Research Sikandar Hayat Bosan told the Senate on Thursday that a request had been received from the Punjab government to continue subsidy on fertiliser. A meeting will be held on Monday to review the issue.

Responding to a point of order on the issue raised by Mohsin Leghari, he said that the subsidy scheme was launched in 2016 at a cost of Rs27.96 billion with equal share from the federal and provincial governments.

Under the scheme, he said, Rs300 and Rs156 per bag subsidy was provided to farmers on DAP and urea, respectively. The scheme was widely lauded by the farmer community and the use of DAP witnessed 23 per cent increase and urea 18pc after the subsidy was introduced.

Mr Bosan said that the Senate Standing Committee on National Food Security had recommended that General Sales Tax on fertiliser should be waived to provide maximum relief to farmers.

In his statement, the PPP leader also rejected the exports incentive package announced by the prime minister for textile sector and termed it “too little and too late.”

He said that during the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s rule, the country had lost its hard-earned competitiveness, which had been previously achieved through the industry-friendly policies of the PPP.

The former president said that Pakistan’s textile exports had peaked during his tenure to 13.4 per cent of GDP, and had sharply declined to only 7.8 per cent of GDP during 2016.

Published in Dawn, January 13th, 2017