MULTAN, Jan 10: Pakistan had refused the condition of International Monetary Fund (IMF) to levy tax on agriculture, Food and Agriculture Minister Nazar Muhammad Gondal claimed.

Addressing a seminar titled ‘grow more wheat’ at Bahauddin Zakariya University (BZU) here on Saturday, the federal minister said that IMF and other financial institutions provided loans on their conditions but it was for the first time in the history of Pakistan that the government remained successful in obtaining IMF loan on its own terms and conditions.

He said that procurement centers would be established much before the harvesting of wheat. He said that the procurement process would start without any delay instead of fixing any date.

He said the government had considered providing subsidy to farmers on diesel but this was not possible because there was no viable method to apply it. He said the government was prepared to procure wheat from farmers at Rs950 per 40kg as the president and prime minister were keenly interested in improving country’s agriculture sector.

He said the previous government had paid Rs60 billion to farmers of other countries by importing wheat but the present government had decided to ensure adequate returns to local farmers by increasing the procurement price from Rs625 to Rs950 per 40kg.

He said the government was fully concentrating on agriculture sector and had achieved the wheat sowing target as the crop had been sown on 22 million acres against 20 million acres previously.

The minister said that support price was only for wheat and not for rice, cotton or any other crop as the government introduced indicator prices only for other crops.

He said the government had for the first time intervened to stabilise the prices of rice and cotton in the favour of farmers. He said that purchase of paddy through Passco and purchase of cotton through Trading Corporation of Pakistan were part of the government efforts to provide reasonable returns to farmers of their produce.

He said the government tried importing maximum quantity of fertilizers but, he admitted, the process got delayed due to multiple reasons.

He said the federal government had compelled the local fertilizer manufacturers to provide the 50 per cent of required quantity of fertilizer to the government to meet country’s fertilizer needs and the federal government had passed on that quantity to the provinces.

The minister claimed that most of the people standing in queues to purchase fertilizers were not farmers but were hoarders instead.

Punjab Agriculture Minister Ahmed Ali Aulakh said that small farmers could not purchase agricultural inputs, including fertilizers and seed, owing to scarcity of these products.

He said the farm sector faced acute shortage of water and electricity and inflated rates of diesel coupled with exploitation caused by the middleman. He said that the province produced 16 million tonnes of wheat against 18.5 million tons target last year.

He claimed that the provincial government was channelising all its efforts to improve the agriculture sector that included campaigning against substandard pesticides, subsidy of Rs2 billion under green tractor scheme and the introduction of improved varieties of wheat through research.

He said that wheat had been sown over an area of 16.9 million acres against 17 million acres target which was enhanced from 15.9 million acres previous target.

BZU vice-chancellor Dr Zaffarullah said that agriculture sector contributed 23 per cent in GDP with 75 per cent population depending upon it but we were much below in wheat yield against rest of the countries that were getting 72 mounds per acre while we were producing only 26 mounds per acre.

He said that Agriculture College Multan was established in 1989 with 65-mmeber faculty and most of the members were PhDs.

He said the college was offering BSc (honours) to PhD in agriculture for which 40-acre experimental station was working while 300 acres had been provided to the college for tunnel farming, drip irrigation and other projects.