Mahmood Nawaz Shah
Vice president Abadgar Board, Sindh

LAST year, the PTI government talked about a Rs309 billion National Emergency Programme for Agriculture over five years in the 2019-20 budget. There is no mention of it this year. Has it been discontinued or revised or what happened to it? Does anyone know? Sindh’s share in this was calculated at Rs18bn but the current budget is simply silent over it.

The PTI government has been criticising past governments for their lack of planning but now it seems to be doing the same thing itself. The federal government could have instead revised this emergency programme or slashed its allocations in the wake of the Covid-19 situation. Out of the Rs50bn allocated for agriculture, Rs10bn are earmarked for locust control in this budget. Our information is that Rs37bn has already been announced for the fertiliser sector’s subsidy and this is about 85 per cent of Rs50bn. And the government has not responded to issues confronting the major cash crop of cotton and how it is to be revived. Priority wise, the agriculture sector doesn’t matter for PTI.

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, June 15th, 2020