Govt plans to provide 19,500 tractors to farmers
Chief Minister of Punjab Maryam Nawaz Sharif on Wednesday launched the fourth phase of the Green Tractor Scheme through a digital balloting process and opened the application portal for its fifth phase, as the provincial government announced plans to provide 19,500 tractors to farmers during the current fiscal year.
The chief minister pressed a button to conduct the digital balloting, with the first tractor under Phase IV going to Masood Khan, son of Lal Khan, from Attock.
According to a briefing, 10,000 tractors with 50 to 65 horsepower will be provided under Phase IV, with the Punjab government offering a subsidy of Rs750,000 per tractor. Under Phase V, 9,500 high-powered tractors ranging from 75 to 125 horsepower will be offered with a subsidy of Rs1 million each. The government has allocated Rs17.6 billion for the Green Tractor Scheme, while 24,000 tractors have already been provided to farmers under the programme with a subsidy of Rs1 million per tractor, the briefing said. The chief minister congratulated the successful applicants and expressed good wishes for them. She also inspected tractors being offered under the scheme, including locally manufactured 90-horsepower and locally assembled 100-horsepower models.
The briefing highlighted the scale of the provincial government’s spending on agricultural mechanisation. It said only 10,000 tractors had been provided to farmers over the previous 20 years, while 35,000 tractors had been distributed during Ms Nawaz’s two-and-a-half-year tenure. Similarly, Rs3 billion had been spent on agricultural mechanisation over two decades compared with Rs20 billion during the last two-and-a-half years. Punjab has also witnessed, for the first time, local manufacturing of 90-horsepower tractors and assembly of 100-horsepower tractors, according to the briefing. More than 213,637 farmers applied for the Green Tractor Programme, of whom 128,757 were declared eligible for the balloting after verification through the Punjab Land Records Authority and Nadra.
The briefing said farmers owning five acres or more of agricultural land were eligible to apply. District-wise tractor quotas had been fixed according to the proportion of cultivated land, with districts including Bhakkar, Jhang, Lodhran and Vehari having relatively higher shares.
