MULTAN, Nov 20: The ministry of food, agriculture and livestock has postponed the 38th meeting of its Agricultural Pesticides Technical Advisory Committee (Aptac), which was scheduled to be held in Islamabad on Friday (Nov 21) to finalize the draft of amended agricultural pesticides rules.
Main points on the agenda of the now postponed meeting were finalization of the draft SRO 781(1)/2003, expansion in the generic list (form-16 of the import of pesticides and herbicides) and review of registration of brand names of pesticides (form-1).
The meeting was called on a short notice of 48 hours to decide the fate of the amended pesticides rules approved by the 36th Aptac meeting held on May 31, 2003. Besides, the ministry had also called meeting of a special sub-committee a day before the 38th Aptac meeting on November 20, perhaps, to propose recommendations on the agenda to the advisory committee.
The sub-committee meeting, however, was held as per the schedule on Thursday. Sources, who attended the sub-committee meeting, told Dawn that all the stakeholders except Punjab had agreed to implement the amended rules in order to ensure quality and fair price to the growers. The official representing the big province reiterated the stance that doing away at once with the network of distributors in the pesticides business was not possible. Moreover, he allegedly also opposed expansion on the free import list of form-16.
He was reported to have said that Punjab would not support expansion on the form-16 without field trial of the chemicals expected to be brought on the free import list. He, however, did not change his stance even when reminded that the meeting was reviewing only those chemistries to bring on the free import list that had already been tested in the field but only a few pesticides firms could import them for being on the form-1.
Salient features of the proposed amendments in the agricultural pesticides rules, 1973, are that the importers/formulators should themselves undertake repacking of pesticides in retail packs before passing on to the distributors or dealers (as the case may be) with legal warranty of quality and quantity, all the registered/permitted pesticides may be sold under local brand names and the price mentioned on the label should be the same as that of given on the invoice while paying government taxes and duties, including GST.
The Minfal had also issued a draft of the amended pesticides rules after they got vetted it from the federal ministry of law and parliamentary affairs, and November 1, 2003, was fixed as the date to start implementation on the amended pesticides rules. However, the authorities at the Minfal called 37th meeting of Aptac on an unprecedented short notice of 48 hours on October 4, 2003. The meeting allegedly put the matter of implementation on the proposed pesticides rules in the cold storage by bringing them again on the agenda of the Aptac despite the fact that the advisory committee had already approved the new laws in its previous meeting.
It was decided in the 37th Aptac meeting that the Minfal secretary would constitute a sub-committee in the third week of October to review the proposed pesticides rules, which were to be implemented from November 1. However, when the secretary could not constitute the sub-committee within the given timeframe the future of the amended pesticides rules became bleak viz-a-viz their enforcement. But, the State Minister for Agriculture, Sikander Hayat Bosan, had reportedly assured at a news conference he addressed along with Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz in Multan that the amended pesticides rules would be enforced at any cost in letter and spirit as were recommended by the 36th Aptac meeting and that too in the month of November.
The news that the Aptac meeting had been called to finalize the draft amendments was welcomed by and large by the stakeholders of agriculture sector but sources in the ministry were sceptical that the meeting (38th of Aptac) would be held. They said this time the people with vested interest not even wanted to put off the matter of implementation on the proposed pesticides rules once again but they also wanted to delay expansion in generic list (form-16) ahead of the wheat-sowing season.
They disclosed that some of the pesticides firms had a monopolistic control over the sale of some herbicides required to weed out injurious herbs from the wheat fields and in case the chemistry of these herbicides had come on free import list of form-16 the companies would lose their monopoly in the market. The sources said as the wheat acreage was likely to break all the previous records in the country after the increase in official wheat procurement price by Rs50, the demand of herbicides would be increased manifold this year which the monopolistic firms were unlikely to meet, thus they would exploit the situation by raising price of their products.
They warned that shortage of herbicides for wheat crop could create a situation identical to that of cotton crop this year when the growers and the country lost an opportunity to have a bumper crop just because of the shortage of pesticides at the crucial stage of the crop.