HYDERABAD, Feb 22: The Sindh Chamber of Agriculture (SCA) demanded on Friday that the government set up centres for wheat procurement and ensure that wheat is purchased at the official support price of Rs1,200 per maund from growers.

These demands were made in an SCA meeting held on Friday, presided over by Dr Syed Nadeem Qamar.

The SCA officials said that wheat dealers in the open market were offering higher prices than the price fixed by the government. If the government did not purchase wheat from farmers then they would be exploited by the dealers, they said.

Discussing the demand made by the Pakistan Farmers’ Alliance, the SCA members said that India should be given the MFN status only if the prices of all agricultural inputs were on a par with the prices over there.

They said that they would not object to granting India the MFN status only if the government brought Pakistan’s own agriculture sector on a par with that of India’s, by reducing prices of agricultural inputs, fixing support prices for 25 agricultural products and ensuring subsidised electricity for tubewells.

Members reminded government officials that one bag of fertiliser cost Rs600 in India but cost Rs1,800 – 200 per cent more than its price in India. Similarly, they said, in Pakistan only wheat’s support price was fixed and even that was hardly given to the growers, but in India support prices of 25 agro commodities were fixed and the stated price was paid to each and every farmer.

The SCA members said that the Indian government did not impose general sales tax (GST) on agricultural inputs but in Pakistan everything — all the materials such as seeds, fertilisers, pesticides and machineries — were sold with 16 per cent GST. They argued that India had granted the MFN status to Pakistan way back in 1996 because it had suited their needs.

Members of the SCA meeting warned that if India was granted the MFN status under the current circumstances, it would lead to ‘economic murder’ of millions of people associated the farming sector.

The meeting was attended by Mir Murad Ali Khan Talpur, Mir Imdad Ali, Akhund Ghulam Mohammad Siddiqui, Agha Nasrullah Khan, Zahid Bhurgari, Mohammad Khan Sarejo, Nabi Bux Sathio and others.