MULTAN: Agriculturists based in southern Punjab are of the view that though the IMF package may have a short-term benefit, it will create problems in the long run. They have urged the government to take appropriate steps to stabilise the economy on a solid basis so that it may become a self-sustaining unit.
They also believe that the farming community would not be able to pay the proposed agriculture tax due to several reasons. Instead, they have urged the government to take immediate steps to address the problems they were facing after the failure to sell wheat, cotton, sugarcane and rice crops at reasonable prices during 2008.
Mushtaq Hussain Bokhari, a local economist, said the imposition of agriculture tax was fine on paper, but how is the farming community going to survive when it is already facing its worst crisis. He said the IMF package could be justified on account of decreasing cash flow in the last year or so. However, he added, the country could have earned foreign exchange through rice export “because we had a bumper crop at our disposal”, but government failed to manage the crop properly and the farmers were forced to sell the commodity at much lower prices.
Multan Industrial Estate Board of Management Chairman Iqbal Hassan said that IMF’s loan would put a negative impact on country’s agriculture sector because, according to him, the government had already assured the IMF that it will impose agriculture tax to generate revenue.
He said that government was not sincere in solving problems.
“There is no effort to introduce policies that could help to stabilise the economy on a permanent basis,: he said, adding that when the last government quit office, the local debt was worth Rs2,880 billion which has now gone up to Rs3,460 billion. Likewise, the foreign debt was $44 billion which has increased to $52 billion. “It is not difficult to see where the economy is going.”
Khawja Muhammad Shoaib of Farmers’ Vision Forum said that the farming community was ready to play its role for the stabilisation of economy. In this regard, he asked the government to do away with the subsidy of Rs44 billion on fertilizers because “this subsidy is not being passed on to the farming community anyway, and only the industrial sector was getting the benefit”.
