Islamabad: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced mega Kissan Package under which farmers will be provided subsidised loans worth 1800 billion rupees. Announcing package here, he said as compared to previous year increase in these loans is 400 billion rupees.

He said to facilitate farmers, coalition government will provide subsidy of over ten billion rupees to waive off mark-up fee on loans availed by farmers of flood affected areas. Prime Minister said this mega package also includes loans worth 50 billion rupees for youth of rural areas that wants to invest in agriculture sector. For this purpose, government will provide 6.4 billion rupees as a subsidy on mark-up of loans. Prime Minister said after successful negotiations with fertilizers producers, new price of DAP has been fixed to 11,250 rupees per bag. For this purpose, government negotiated a subsidy of 2500 rupees per bag with fertilizer producers.

He said under this package five billion rupees has been reserved to provide subsidy on mark-up of loans that will be provided to landless peasants of flood affected areas. He said 1.2 million bags of certified seed will be provided to farmers of flood-hit areas. He said Small and Medium Enterprises will be regularised for investment in agriculture sector. SME’s interested in investment in this sector will be able to get loans on subsidised rates and for this purpose we have fixed 6.4 billion rupees. Under their modernization scheme 10 billion rupees were fixed.

.Keeping in view increased prices of new tractors, import of used tractors has also been permitted and now farmers can import second hand tractors up to five years of their manufacture date.  Subsidy on duty of five-year old tractor will be 50 percent while duty on a three-year old tractor will be 36 percent. Shehbaz Sharif announced import of five hundred thousand tonnes of Urea. He said import of two hundred thousand tonnes of Urea has been completed while remaining will be completed soon.  It has been allowed to import 2.6 million tonnes of wheat out of which one million tons has already reached Pakistan while remaining 1.6 million tonnes will be procured to avert any kind of shortage of this commodity in country.

Regarding relief in electricity bills for farmers, Shehbaz Sharif said that there are around 300,000 agri tube-wells in country and government has planned to solarise these tube-wells for which a massive subsidy will be provided. He said a flat rate of 13 rupees per unit will be charged on agricultural tube-wells.

Published in The Daily National Courier, November, 01 2022

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