MULTAN, June 11: Growers and their organizations have offered mixed reaction to the 'Kissan package' announced by President Gen Pervez Musharraf on Thursday.

Welcoming some incentives announced in the package including low mark-up rate and withdrawal of the special powers entrusted upon the Zarai Taraqiati Bank Limited under the Land Revenue Act viz-a-viz arrest of the loan defaulters, the growers observed that by and large the package was a vague attempt to address problems of the farming community.

In a survey conducted by this correspondent, majority of the growers said the package was meant to benefit big farmers rather than the small ones, who provide the actual thrust of economic activity in the rural Pakistan with most of the cultivable land under their possession.

They said the package had rather disappointed them as neither the government had withdrawn GST on farm inputs nor had it rationalized diesel price and power tariff.

Farmers Associates of Pakistan chairman, MNA Makhdoom Shah Mehmood Qureshi said the farming community had been demanding abolition of GST on the farm inputs like fertilizers and pesticides as the levy had increased the growers' cost of production but the package was silent on this count.

He said although the president had announced a reduction of Rs100 in the DAP price, it had to be seen that how the market would respond when the new price would come in vogue by July 1.

He said although the government had admitted that the demand of urea in the next year would increase, the policymakers did not chalk out any plan to cope with the crisis.

He said lowering down the mark-up on the farm loans from 14 to 9 per cent was a step in right direction but it had to be brought down further as the industrial sector at present was enjoying loans against a mark-up ranging between 4 and 6 per cent per annum. He said the package was also silent on putting in place a flawless marketing mechanism for the agricultural produces.

In his concluding remarks, he termed the package a half-baked effort to bring a change in the overall anti-grower policy framework of the present regime that had increased poverty in the rural areas to an alarming proportion.

Progressive grower Saddique Akbar Bokhari said the withdrawal of the ZTBL special powers to arrest the defaulters was a decision that would restore the farming community's self-respect.

He said otherwise the package had nothing for the small growers as they were not expected to reap benefit of the duty incentives announced on the import of heavy duty tractors of 100 and above horse powers.

He said high agricultural growth rate could only be achieved by facilitating the small growers. He said cotton was the mainstay of the country's agro-based economy and more than 50 per cent of the area under cotton was cultivated by the small growers.

He said the small growers picked hardly 8 to 12 maunds of cotton per acre against the progressive growers' average per acre yield of 20 to 30 maunds only due to a disparity in agronomic practices and access to bank loans and mechanised farming.

Small Growers Association chairman, Ishtiaq Hussain Jaffri termed the 'Kissan package' a gimmick to hoodwink the unprivileged small growers. He said whatever incentives the president had announced at the first instance were meant for the big land-lords and then they had no immediate impact on the rural economy.

He said most of the measures announced in the package would start bearing fruit, if any, by October and November at the time of wheat sowing. He said the 9 per cent mark-up would be introduced by July 1st and by that time the growers of the Kharif crops would have taken loans at the high mark-up rates.

Similarly, DAP was a fertilizer mainly used for wheat while the president did not announce any reduction in urea price which was used to enhance fertility of the land under cotton cultivation.

He said the Pakistani growers were mainly using tractors having 50 to 85 horse power but the so-called 'Kissan package' had not announced any price cut for this category of tractors to benefit their local manufactures.

He said a local tractor manufacturing firm had posted a net profit of Rs1.1 billion this year while the other Rs600m. Mango Growers Association President Zahid Gardezi said that the package had nothing that could revolutionise the agriculture sector of the country.