IT has been seven years since the landmark 18th Constitutional Amendment was introduced. Apart from decentralisation under this amendment, the overall fiscal health of provinces has improved in the wake of the seventh National Finance Commission (NFC) Award.

Around 17 federal ministries were abolished after the amendment; the agriculture sector was one of them.

The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) — which prides itself on introducing the amendment and whose provincial government is now in the last leg of its second successive tenure in Sindh — has by and large failed to deliver the goods in the agriculture sector despite enjoying more political authority and improved fiscal space.

The system is running ad hoc and several agriculture secretaries have been changed since 2013.

Senior officials in the Sindh government admit that lack of capacity mars the performance of provincial departments, including agriculture. In the past three years, the departments have not been able to properly utilise funds despite timely releases by the Sindh finance department.

Under the seventh NFC award which expired in 2015, the share of provinces in the federal divisible pool increased by 11.5 percentage points to 57.5pc. Sindh’s share was calculated at 24.55pc, the second highest after Punjab.

Sindh’s agriculture secretary Sajid Jamal Abro contends that though the subject of agriculture was devolved after the 18th Amendment, the federal government still performs various functions of the sector.

Provinces lack institutional capacity and they keep coming up with a conventional approach in newer schemes without doing a cost-benefit analysis

For instance, the Ministry of National Food Security and Research is still there even after decentralisation, he says. Moreover, the federal government continues to govern the pesticide sector.

As for sugarcane, the Centre deals with sugar millers’ problems relating to exports, affecting the crop’s crushing in the province.

He says that the Sindh’s research sector needs more investment as it currently gets Rs500m allocations annually out of the Rs7bn provincial annual development plan (ADP). Investing more in research, instead of distributing implements alone, will help the province introduce varieties that have higher yield potential, which will ultimately increase per-acre productivity.

However, the issues facing major crops of sugarcane, wheat, rice and cotton in Sindh are related more to the provincial departments then the Centre. Despite Sindh’s climatic edge, per-acre yields are in decline.

Insufficient funds?

As far as finances are concerned, the situation has improved since the seventh NFC award. However, the provincial departments lack the capacity to utilise these funds, a senior Sindh government official concedes.

On delay in fund releases from Centre to the Sindh government, he said: “We do get belated releases under federal transfers due to insufficient collections by the federal government, but we have a cushion to meet our demands.”

He puts the blame on provincial departments who “fail to meet their own targets”. For instance, the education department — whose performance is monitored by the chief minister himself — utilised around Rs110bn last year against the development and non-development allocations of Rs200bn.

Expenditures by departments increase only in May-June. Sindh finance department’s website shows an expenditure of Rs167.93m (only 9pc of the released funds) by the agriculture department in the first quarter of 2017-18 under ongoing schemes.

Amid lack of regulations to control poor-quality and impure seeds flooding the markets, the Sindh Seed Corporation (SSC) with a huge area of eight farms has not been able to come up with required quality seeds.

In case of cotton, its growers depend on whatever seed arrives in the market from Punjab.

Handling wheat surpluses, arresting decline in important oilseed crop of sunflower, unending encroachment of high-delta sugarcane crop in cotton zones and boosting pulses’ production remain major issues facing the province’s agriculture sector.

Wheat, pulses and sunflower are crops that ensure food security. However, no spadework is seen at provincial level to face these challenges.

Lack of capacity

Mahmood Nawaz Shah of the Sindh Abadgar Board argues that Punjab has performed better in the farm sector after the 18th Amendment.

“The Punjab government has given ownership to this sector, be it cotton or rice crops. It pitched in a subsidy of Rs5,000 per acre for cotton and rice crops. It even subsidised the fertiliser sector,” he says. “In Sindh, the much talked-about agriculture policy is drafted by consultants, and that too because it is mandatory under the PC-I of the World Bank-funded Sindh Agriculture Growth Project (SAGP).”

During its manifesto for the 2013 general elections, the PPP promised to fix support price of four major crops besides announcing the agricultural policy at the beginning of every year.

However, it is only sugarcane whose indicative price is fixed in line with the Sugar Factories Control Act of 1950, whereas wheat’s support price is announced by the federal government.

“Provinces lack institutional capacity and they keep coming up with conventional approach of newer schemes without having a cost-benefit analysis,” economist Dr Kaiser Bengali says. “They don’t realise how one sector will be affected or linked with another in a certain scheme.”

He says provincial departments don’t know how to work on development models in economic terms. “We need to have a full-fledged development structure in place. Only changing the name of the planning and development department to planning board is not going to produce desired results.”

Overlapping functions

Part of the blame lies on the federal government as well. Sindh complains that bodies or departments abolished under the 18th Amendment continue to function under the federal government’s umbrella.

Sindh government officials question why the federal government continues to manage the erstwhile Karachi-based Pakistan Central Cotton Committee that now works in Multan.

Moreover, the Pakistan Cotton Standard Institute and Federal Seed Certification and Registration Department still exist federally, and the Federal Committee on Agriculture continues to fix Kharif crop targets for provinces despite Sindh’s reservations that they are higher.

A Sindh government official believes that the situation is leading to the overlapping of functions. “For instance, if Sindh is not willing to share the cost of subsidy on fertiliser, it is forced to comply in the larger national interest or the amount is deducted at source,” he laments.

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, November 6th, 2017