LAHORE: Farmers have threatened to hold province-wide protests on April 25 against poor wheat procurement target and lower grain support price in Punjab.

Sardar Zafar Hussain, president of the Kisan Board Pakistan, announced at a press conference here on Friday that demonstrations would be held at all district headquarters and other major towns in the province to make the government procure at least five million tonnes of wheat in the current season and that grain support price be raised from current Rs3,900 to Rs5,000 per 40kg.

Flanked by Akhtar Farooq Meo and Mian Rashid Minhala, he alleged that the government was deliberately delaying the wheat procurement campaign because of which the prices of grain in the open market were on the decline.

He demanded that the government should not only increase the official support price to Rs5,000 per 40 but also enhance its procurement target from 2m tonnes to 5m tonnes to stabilize the local market.

He lamented that farm input prices had more than doubled in the last one year or so but the farmers were being forced to sell their produce at the last year rates and even lower than that.

He claimed that the fertiliser companies had increased by Rs600 per bag the urea rate four days ago though no new tax had been imposed on any ingredient of the fertiliser or on the companies.

Published in Dawn, April 20th, 2024