KARACHI, Jan 17: Provincial Minister for Agriculture Syed Ghulam Nawaz has assured wheat growers that the procurement centres will start operations from March 1, and the government will also provide free paddy seeds to the rice farmers in the upper Sindh.

This assurance was extended by the minister in a recent meeting with a delegation of the Sindh Abadgar Board headed by its chairman Majid Nizamani.

The minister informed the delegation that the government would lift moratorium on providing subsidised farm implements to the growers for which Rs50 million had been allocated.

The delegation informed the minister that paddy growers had suffered a loss of Rs25-30 billion due to delay in procurement by Pakistan Storage and Supplies Corporation (Passco) as unexpected rains destroyed about 70 per cent of harvested paddy which was lying in the fields.

It urged the minister to provide subsidy worth Rs200 million on agricultural implements including 200 tractors on the pattern of the Punjab government, which provides about 10,000 tractors every year to its farmers.

The delegation further said that the province’s share in total farm production was one third and hence the government should provide about 3,000 tractors on subsidised rates besides one tractor should be given free to the best grower in every tehsil.

Presently, only one tractor is given as reward to the best grower in Sindh.

Mr Nizamani informed the minister that the last year’s worst riots on urea were the result of government policy to distribute the fertiliser through National Fertiliser Corporation (NFC).

He said the government decision of taking over distribution of 50 per cent of the locally-produced urea again led to hoarding of the commodity and as a result of black-marketing it was now available at Rs850 per bag as against the controlled price of Rs670 per bag.