LAHORE, Nov 2: Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has assured a representative delegation of US company “Monsanto” that his government will develop a roadmap for speedy cooperation with the firm to increase cotton production and promote modern technology.

Reacting to it, associations of farmers and seed suppliers have announced their plan to resist the move.

“Punjab is an agrarian province and cotton has a key importance in its economy and acquiring modern technology to increase cotton production is the need of the hour. And the government will develop a roadmap for speedy and transparent cooperation with Monsanto,” Mr Sharif told US company's Directors of Global Cotton and Specialty Technology Team Rick Gaudet and Dr T.Y. Vaughan here on Tuesday.

A handout issued by the public relations department said that besides elected representatives and officials, cotton experts, industrialists, ginners and representatives of farmers were also present on the occasion.

Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry President Shahzad Ali Malik (also chairman of the Seed Association of Pakistan) at a meeting opposed the Punjab government's proposed cooperation with Monsanto, saying it would “spell a disaster for national seed companies besides causing huge financial burden on the exchequer”.

He said what Monsanto was offering at huge expenses was being provided by a German and a Chinese firm free of cost, while Monsanto's local trials of Bt cotton could not promise a better future.

Pakistan Kissan Rabita Committee joint secretaries Farooq Tariq and Mehr Abdul Sattar announced launching of a protest movement against Monsanto which, they said, was out to assault local culture and farm wisdom gained through experiments of centuries.

They said the International Monetary Fund was plundering the national economy while the US firm would be damaging the local small-time farmers by corporatising the seed and pesticides business besides causing irreparable loss to the local biodiversity through single crop farming on a large scale.