PUNJAB could utilise only around 57pc of its revised annual development plan allocations for the agriculture sector during the first 10 months of the ongoing financial year. Or only 60.56pc of the released ADP funds were utilised.

Ironically, the utilisation rate was only 3.17pc for the Kissan Package, the flagship intervention of the provincial government in the farm sector. The ratio slightly improves to 5.87pc when compared with the funds released between July 2016 and April 2017.

The Kissan Package was designed as ‘an intervention to support incomes and improve agricultural output’, says the Consortium for Development Policy Research, which was a part of the project design discussions.

The government revised downwards the ADP for the agriculture sector almost by half, from the original allocation of Rs20bn to Rs11.32bn, reveals official data. The main cut was made in the Kissan Package by nearly Rs10bn to just over Rs817m.

“It seems that the government is diverting funds towards such development projects which will be visible to the electorate,” says Khalid Mahmood Khokhar

The share of agriculture research has been lowered to Rs612.7m from over Rs1.44bn announced in the budget. And the utilisation for new research schemes stands at 2.22pc of the revised allocations and 9.5pc of the released funds.

The downward ADP revision and gross under-utilisation of available funds has raised many eyebrows in the wake of the negative growth the sector registered in the previous year.

“It seems that the government is diverting funds towards such development projects which will be visible to the electorate,” says Khalid Mahmood Khokhar, a progressive farmer.

He alleged that not only agriculture but also the health and education sector budgets are been being diverted towards the Orange Line Metro Train project in Lahore.

Sarfaraz Ahmed Khan, another progressive grower and a retired bureaucrat from the Federal Board of Revenue, endorses Mr Khokhar’s views. He claims that under the broad guidelines of the chief minister an officer in the CM Secretariat regulates the finance department for release of funds to various sectors while the funds of other departments are diverted towards the Metro Train.

“Agriculture has never been a priority of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz as even the Kissan Package is the result of sit-ins staged by the farming community more than a year ago who were hard hit by government policies for the agriculture sector,” says Mr Khan, who is also one of the directors of the Punjab Agricultural Research Board, an autonomous body formed by the government to foster an integrated approach for research planning and efficient allocation of research resource.

He complains of corruption and political pick-and-choose in the distribution of relief funds among farmers under the Kissan package and other schemes.

“Hardly 30pc of the cash relief under the Kissan Package, Rs5,000 per acre for cotton growers and Rs3,000 per acre for paddy growers, was distributed while the beneficiaries were chosen on the basis of the lists prepared by the local PML-N leadership with the help of patwaris (revenue officials).”

An official of the agriculture department, who asked not to be named for not being entitled to talk to the media on policy issues, claims that being a new project officials are yet to grasp the nitty-gritty of the Kissan Package. The utilisation ratio will pick up in the coming years when the officials dealing with the project become acclimatised to it.

About 9.5pc utilisation of the meagre Rs60.73m funds were released for new research schemes. Mr Khokhar laments that the government is trying to destroy the existing research institutes by allowing development of residential colonies and commercial establishments on their lands in Rawalpindi, Sialkot, Multan and elsewhere.

“Farmers are calling to save the existing research institutes instead of asking for new ones,” he says referring to the community’s protest in 2015 against the government’s attempt to develop a housing scheme at the lands of the National Agricultural Research Council in Islamabad.

The agriculture department official holds the finance department responsible for delaying the release of funds thereby affecting various schemes. About the issue of doling out research institutions’ lands for activities other than research, he says the department can do nothing once ‘political’ decisions are taken on certain matters.

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, May 15th, 2017