Farmers Getting International Rates On Their Outputs: Cheema

Special Assistant to Prime Minister on National Food Security and Research Jamshed Iqbal Cheema Thursday said the government was ensuring provision of justified price to the farmers on their agriculture produces at standard international rates

ISLAMABAD, Oct 7 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 7th Oct, 2021 ) :Special Assistant to Prime Minister on National food Security and Research Jamshed Iqbal Cheema Thursday said the government was ensuring provision of justified price to the farmers on their agriculture produces at standard international rates.

He said although the prices of the commodities had gone in the market but the government could not exploit the poor farmers but at the same time, he said the government was going to provide subsidy to support the urban poor population, on four essential items including wheat, rice, sugar and pulses under its Ehsaas Programme from its own resources.

Addressing an event organized in connection with World Cotton Day here, the SAPM said there were 8.3 million farmer families in the country which means 50 million people were directly dependent on the agriculture sector.

Jamshed Cheema said the previous governments used to strangulate the poor farmers by keeping rates of their agriculture outputs very low.

He said now the government was shifting its focus from capital intensive industry to labour intensive industry and the best examples of the later were farmers of textile.

He said under Ehsaas programme, the government was providing cash support of Rs 256 billion which was the highest in history.

Further he said the previous government provided subsidy of Rs 260 billion while the current government was giving subsidy of over Rs 680 billion so in total the government was spending Rs 936 billion to support the deprived segment of the society.

The SAPM said farmers consist of 38% of total population but their share to GDP was 19% which meant their income was half of the average income in the country.