Ijaz Kakakhel Islamabad
Federal Minister for food security and research Tariq Bashir Cheema on Thursday told the national assembly that there were a lot of pressures on government to allow sugar export but assure the House that the government could not allow until every districts provide details of physical stock of sugar.
“The government cannot allow export of sugar and then import at higher prices,”, he told the national assembly while responding to questions of various MPs.
He warned that if today the government announce export of sugar, its price will jake up in local market. The government has to look from all angles before making any decision.
While not beginning sugar mill crushing, the minister claimed that it was due to the fact that some of sugarmills claimed that first they wanted to remove the old sock and then start new crushing. “Still I don’t know exact stock of sugar and also wheat”. We are trying to increase cotton crop and induced farmers to grow more cotton, which will help in increasing foreign exchange reserve.
Yes, he said mostly agriculture related people were elected and sitting in this house. We never made justice with agri sector since long. Kissan Package announced but unfortunately, it was not implemented.
But PM Shehbaz Shairf called me to work hard for two sectors one for agriculture and second Information Technologies. He told us to work for the improvement of both sectors. But flood destroyed 23 districts of Sindh, Balochistan major districts, two districts of Punjab and some areas of KP.
Major loss occurred to agriculture sector. In Sindh 100 pc cotton crop, dates crop destroyed. Kissan Package delay, sorry for that. Agri is devolved subject and federal govt through food security ministry collected data and made some efforts.
Few years ago, we were wheat, cotton exporter. Though we called agro base economy but we are becoming agri commodities importers and spent precious foreign exchange.
