LAHORE: Vice President of Pakistan Businesses Forum (PBF) Ahmad Jawad has lauded the effort of the Prime Minister that government has chalked out a comprehensive agricultural transformation plan “for the very first time in the country’s history. Talking to media, he said we have to focus on enhancing per acre yield of crops by adopting better farming techniques and have to develop weather-resistant seeds for different crops. Pakistan is gifted with enormous potential to grow but the resource constraints are forcing it to secure more loans to run its affairs and at the same time developmental allocations are reduced as a matter of routine every year to make room for compulsory expenditure. In this backdrop, the two-pronged strategy of Prime Minister Imran Khan to focus on industrialization and agricultural growth is the best approach to address our financial and economic difficulties. Jawad said It is satisfying that the Government has embarked upon an ambitious programme to develop agriculture on modern lines at a cost of Rs. 110 billion over three years and to boost agriculture credit by 80pc to Rs2.7 trillion for almost doubling the grain harvest, increasing fruit and vegetable production five times, and trebling milk output. Pakistan has fertile land and a vast irrigation system but crop productivity is very low as compared to other agricultural countries mainly because we ignored proper research and development. There is no doubt that Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) has been slow working hard to introduce new and better varieties of various crops especially wheat, rice, maize, cotton and pulses but unfortunately they are not provided enough marketing to carry out its activities on the field at the optimum level. DNA
