The new budget (2017-2018)/Finance Bill seems quite promising for the agro-economy when compared with the time barred incentives offered and promised by the government last year. One example to quote is Kissan Package which was offered with a positive intent by the government for the plight of farming community but could not be of much help to the agricultural sector due to market instability and the somewhat inappropriate timing of announcement of a subsidy. As a result, the intent of the government to support and strengthen the agricultural sector could not materialise.
Such unfulfilled promises and commitments by the government resulted in a serious trust deficit between the government and other stakeholders.
However, this year around, the Government seems to have adopted a visibly different approach with an intent of bridging the gap between all the stakeholders and policy makers. Probably this is why they provided the opportunity to the input providers to forward their recommendations, but it seems that the government needs to come up with certain corrective measures to ensure long term relief to agricultural sector through favourable and farmer friendly agricultural policies.
The need of hour is for the government and other stakeholders to sit together to carve out a way forward. The contribution of last year which played an important role in uplift of the agricultural economy by sharing subsidy mechanism with the government must be given a clear policy confidence in the new fiscal year.
It is therefore suggested to the government to consider agricultural experts’ suggestions regarding reduction of GST on inputs, providing relief in terms of reducing the cost of production of input and by easing GIDC to alleviate the long deprived farming community of additional burden. Moreover, the government should come up with corrective measures in approved budget to reduce the cost of input so that fertiliser prices in Pakistan may be made competitive with the International market. The efforts of all stakeholders which went into exercise of pre-budget suggestions is also worth considering.
Adnan Ali Mughal
Islamabad
