THE Sindh government’s agriculture budget for 2016-17 has evoked a mixed response from growers. For some the budget presents no innovative ideas to pull farming out of its distressed state while others stress the government needs to ensure timely development spending to improve service delivery.

Some growers criticise what they call the government’s misplaced priorities and its failure to address core issues despite agriculture growth falling to -0.19pc.

In his budget speech Sindh Finance Minister Murad Ali Shah announced subsidies for tractors, tubewells, 1,500 agricultural implements, 73 solar powered tubewells, etc.

The allocations for ongoing agricultural schemes are estimated at Rs4826.804m, and for new projects at Rs967.196m

The annual development programme for agriculture is pitched at Rs5.4bn against last year’s Rs4.5bn, indicating an increase of 28.9pc.

Growers like Dr Syed Nadeem Qamar, president of Sindh Chamber of Agriculture (SCA), feel that the federal government has made a headway by announcing subsidies that were earlier withdrawn. He says that the Sindh government seems to be focusing on lining the main canals, such as Nara, which is a positive sign to ensure water conservation.

His anxiety is that important projects should be result-oriented and must have a positive bearing on the farm sector. He is concerned about the overall state of agriculture which, he says, is not encouraging. He adds seed development should be an area of concern.The cotton sector has been facing serious seeds issue which resulted in the drastic decline of cotton production.

According to the finance minister, a sum of Rs2000m has been provided for the Sindh Agriculture Growth Project and Rs3000m for the Sindh Irrigated Agriculture Productivity Enhancement Project. The allocations for ongoing schemes for development of agriculture are estimated at Rs4826.804m and for new projects at Rs967.196m.

Sindh Abadgar Board (SAB) president Mahmood Nawaz Shah is disappointed by the provincial budget and termed it a case of misplaced priorities.

“Ghotki is a cotton growing area and the cotton sector is not performing well for a variety of reasons. Regardless of this, the government is now going to establish an institute for a high delta crop like sugarcane instead of addressing current issues in cotton sector”, he remarks.

Similarly, he asserts, the finance minister’s budget speech doesn’t reflect how the government plans to stop the declining trend in prices of commodities. While the federal government has taken some steps for subsidising vital inputs in order to reduce increasing cost of production, the Sindh government has not yet shared its own plans.SCA General Secretary Nabi Bux Sathio echoes similar concerns. He says that out of Sindh’s total ADP of Rs225bn, the agriculture sector would get Rs5.8bn which is inclusive of allocations of Rs4.82bn for on-going schemes. Such allocation, he says, is probably about 2pc of the total development budget. He is dissatisfied with the meagre allocation of Rs266.43m for the research wing of the agriculture department against Rs439.78m of the extension wing; as with an ineffective research wing the agriculture extension department cannot do much. So, he says, these figures clearly reflect a disparity in allocations.

Published in Dawn, Business & Finance weekly, June 20th, 2016