Trade with India: farmers announce sit-in against govt’s policy

KARACHI

The All Pakistan Kissan Ittehad (APKI) on Wednesday announced to observe a sit-in at Wahga border to protest against the government’s policy to liberalise trade with India.
Before staging the sit-in, the protesting farmers would take out a long march from Lahore on March 31 to prevent the federal government from opening of trade with India through land routes under the garb of NDMA.
“This roadmap has been adopted because the government, at the moment, has turned its ears deaf towards our concerns and is working on the suggestions of bureaucrats who lack the understanding of the critical situations let alone the national interest,” Khalid Mehmood Khokhar, central president of APKI, told reporters at the Karachi Press Club Wednesday.
He said this fancy with trade would push the entire population to depend on their arch rival, India, for food which already has the control of our rivers. And that is something which is very unacceptable to the farmers all over Pakistan.
Khokhar said farmers will continue this agitation till the government decides to step back from its decisions which will culminate in destruction of our backbone, the agriculture sector, and puts our sovereignty at stake.
However, it is the brutal act of the concerned authorities that they have completely ignored the welfare of this sector which is contributing 21% of the total GDP and is providing employment to 25% of the total population of our country, President of Kissan Ittehad regretted.
“The expeditious working of authorities to grant deadly NDMA status to India is beyond logic and sense. No responsible government would take such a decision without conducting thorough and sober due-diligence because any such major change is only advisable in a phased and transitional manner,” he added.
Khokhar reasoned that the trade imbalance that exists between the two countries should open the eyes of the propagators of MFN or NDMA as Pakistan products, despite being an MFN for India for more than 16 years, have badly failed in penetrating the markets of the neighbouring country and the same will continue in the future.
The size of trade between Pakistan and India is around $2.4 billion, heavily in India’s favour with $1.84 billion exports to Pakistan a year ago.
A vast majority of Indian exports forms agriculture products in comparison to which Pakistan is able to export cement and gypsum and only a bit of citrus due to the high tariff barriers, particularly in agriculture, and through a complex scheme of non-tariff barriers.
He asserted that in the presence of India’s high tariff barriers, complex non-tariff barriers and enormous subsidies (both direct and indirect), Pakistan cannot afford to open Wagah or any other land route for agriculture goods.
Hassan Ali Chaniho, president of Sindh Chamber of Agriculture, said: “Furthermore, India’s MFN tariffs for agriculture are 5 times higher than Pakistan (45% versus 9%) so Pakistan has very little to gain from exporting into India with respect to agriculture.”
He added, “The only difference after 17 years will be Pakistani products losing their own market, without getting any significant access in Indian market, due to disadvantage of highly subsidizes that are provide to support the agriculture and other sectors.”
Chaniho mentioned that the Indian government gives subsidies to agriculture sector to the tune of $50 billion.
Other favors that Indian farmers get from their government include free electricity, cheap urea, water for irrigation, seeds in low prices, cheap transportation, subsidized pesticides, and agricultural machinery like tractors. Prices of 26 crops are also subsidized.
On the contrary, Pakistani farmers are in torment because of expensive electricity, high-priced and black marketed urea, costly seeds, substandard agricultural machinery, and general sales tax which is unique to Pakistan as no country in the world has this tax on agricultural sector.
He said that Pakistani government after awarding MFN status to India will immediately lose initiative and the power to negotiate better bilateral trade terms while it will also lose many of manufacturing jobs and livelihood for farmers and other industries’ workers, thereby suffering both economically and socially.