The general body meeting of the Sindh Balochistan Rice Millers and Traders Association (SBRMTA) was held here with its President Gada Hussain Mahessar in the chair.
The meeting discussed at length the problems being faced by the rice businessmen in Sindh and Balochistan, especially the deteriorated law and order, attack of pests on paddy crop, monopoly of the rice exporters, banking mark-up, modernisation of rice industry and others.
Mahessar elaborated the problems that are affecting adversely the rice business that not
only earn foreign exchange every year, but also provide employment to thousands of people, as 700 rice mills run in both the provinces.
The meeting unanimously decided that the federal government as well as the Sindh government should take effective measures and provide needed funds in order to activate the agriculture department and to improve its functioning.
It also decided that the government should salvage agriculture from the clutches of the IMF and support it by allowing subsidy, which is a vogue in all the developed countries while it is banned only in Pakistan.
Pakistan should also deny signing the WTO like India and Brazil. Agriculture should be equipped with modern methods and agri-production be given adequate rates. The government must arrange to purchase what remains from selling in the market. Millers and growers of rice are emancipated from the monopoly of rice exporters.
An impartial institute for rice analysis is established in Karachi with the government representation so as the exporters may not impose the "substandard quality allowance" according to their own will. The government should also check the fraud by the exporters.
It was also suggested that well-to-do and sincere people should come forward and make an export company for the interior Sindh. Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali was appealed to send a delegation of the businessmen of Sindh and Balochistan to find a market in foreign countries for the rice produced in these provinces. |
