LAHORE: Businesses have begun joining the call for revisiting the 18th Amendment.

“Since devolution, numbers of agriculture, which is mainstay of the economy, are unsatisfactory and its contribution towards the GDP is on the decline,” says FPCCI Standing Committee on Agriculture’s former chairman Ahmad Jawad.

Demanding review of the amendment passed unanimously by the parliament almost a decade ago, he argues that agriculture is a federal subject in leading economies like the USA, Brazil, China and neighbouring India considering importance of the sector.

In the country, he adds, performance of the sector declined particularly after the 18th amendment because of lack of uniformity in policies, funding and expertise among the provinces.

He stresses that a pro-farmer enabling environment is imperative to make sector globally competitive and for the purpose the sector needs to be given back to federal authorities.

The 18th Amendment, he says, made food and agriculture predominantly provincial subjects while food security and exports are federal domains. Major regulatory functions that previously rested with the centre continue to do so, even as the Ministry of National Food Security and Research and its reporting bodies lament limiting fiscal space.

Published in Dawn, April 30th, 2020