LAHORE, June 5: The budget has failed to provide any relief to farmers, said officials of the Kissan Board Pakistan here on Monday. President Sadiq Khan Khaqwani and secretary-general Sardar Zafar Husain Khan in a joint statement said that the government had not withdrawn sales tax on agriculture inputs as expected by the farming community.

The government has been charging unprecedented 15 per cent GST on all inputs, which has no parallel in the world, they said. Similarly, they said the GST on fertiliser had also remained untouched. The budget has also not been able to allocate funds for research nor bring down interest rate on loans for agriculture, they said. The sum allocated for drip and sprinkle irrigation will also be distributed on political grounds, as has been the case in most of the allocations, they said. Sum allocated for livestock will only benefit multinationals dealing in milk and milk products, they said.

In nutshell, the budget has turned out to be disappointing for farmers, they claimed.

Convener of the Pakistan Agri-Forum Ibrahim Mughal said that the budget was a disappointment for the farming community as it had increased credit line for farmers but it had not brought down the interest rate on these loans. Research has almost been completely ignored: Rs2.4 billion allocated for it have been kept for an institution in Islamabad, he said. No body knows what kind of research it will do in capital, he said.

He said the president had promised Rs15 billion for sprinkle and drip irrigation in the next three years. By that calculation, he said the next budget should have earmarked at least Rs3 billion, but it had allocated only Rs1 billion.

Drought has taken better of agriculture sector during the last few years, but the government has not announced any new water project in the budget, he said. The government claims to provide Rs12 billion subsidy on fertiliser, but it collects Rs15 billion in GST on fertiliser and pesticides, he said. The budget is full of dichotomies and contradictions, he said.