ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Opposition Leader in National Assembly Syed Khursheed Ahmed Shah on Thursday called upon the government to focus on future challenges and evolve a strategy to cope with problems that may confront the country in upcoming decades.
“Let us focus on the challenges we are going to face due to population increase and subsequent food security issues. We need to give incentives to our farmers to increase agriculture production,” he said speaking in the House.
The Opposition Leader said, the PPPP government had envisaged the present economic recession in 2008 and increased support prices for agricultural produce to help out small farmers. “This trend should continue because if our population continues to increase on present pace, we shall need extra food for our people.”
He claimed that in 2007 Pakistan had imported wheat and sugar but during our tenure we made the country self-sufficient in these crops and prices of crops remained stable during whole of our tenure in office.
Khursheed Shah also mentioned improvement in stock exchange, increase in remittances, decrease in interest rate and increase in salaries of government employees in the tenure of PPPP government.
He said agriculture was backbone of the economy and addressing problems of farmers was the responsibility of government because if this sector would suffer, it would have negative impact on the national economy.
When our agriculture produce will decrease we shall have to import these items meaning that we shall support the economies and farmers of other countries, he said. “Therefore, instead of spending hefty amounts on imports in future, we should at present spent some money on our agriculture sector to enhance its productivity.”
He said the opposition was not opposed to the development activities of the government but it should be careful meaning that spending in one sector should not deprive the other sector. “Let us have a futuristic vision and approach and frame policies today to cope with the issues that will confront us during upcoming decades.”
