LAHORE: Stakeholders have rejected the claim of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chief that agriculture was booming during the PTI rule.

PTI chairman and former prime minister Imran Khan shared on Wednesday a tweet, giving statistics showing an agriculture boom in the financial year 2021.

It was claimed that 18.6 per cent growth was witnessed in cotton production, 9.6pc in sugarcane, 51.6pc in grams, 34.8pc in potato, 10.7pc in rice, 8.6pc in maize and 28.9pc in moong bean in FY21.

A progressive grower and Pakistan Businesses Forum vice-president Ahmad Jawad stated that he was taken aback by the PTI claim that it had made a massive growth in the agriculture sector because nature and the hard work of peasants did wonders otherwise the then government’s policies had been anti-farmers’.

He said the government had increased the cost of production for the farmers substantially as only fertilisers registered a significant jump of up to 150pc, especially for DAP and Potash varieties.

The situation for the locally-manufactured urea was also bleak as the growers had to wait for hours in long queues to get one bag of the compost in a humiliating environment that led to the present wheat output shortfall.

Similarly, prices of tractors went past the purchasing power of farmers, while electricity tariff for tube-wells was also increased many times, he added.

Published in Dawn, May 19th, 2022