Interest-free loans for farmers

THE farmer-friendly PML-N Punjab Government has taken another commendable step forward for helping the farmers overcome their financial problems and encourage them to put in still more hard work to boost agricultural production in the province by announcing somewhat unprecedented interest-free loans for them particularly small farmers cultivating twelve and half acres of land.

The provision of interest-free loans to the farmers forms part of the Provincial Government’s historical Kissan Package which is already under implementation at various levels in the province.

According to the reports in the newspapers, Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif the other day chaired a meeting to review progress of the interest-free loans for farmers programme and said by starting this programme his government has fulfilled another promise with the farmers. He emphatically said that prosperity of the farmers will help a great deal in boosting agricultural production and farmers’ prosperity will make the province prosperous and self-reliant, benefit the agriculture sector on the whole and enable the farmers in general and small cultivators in particular stand on their own feet. He said that a number of revolutionary steps have already been and more are in the pipeline for the uplift of agriculture and prosperity of the farmers.

Under the programme, which will be implemented through financial institutions and banks throughout the province, all mark up on the interest-free loans will be paid by the Punjab Government and the cultivators will not have to worry in this regard. A steering committee has already been constituted for taking immediate steps for speedy and transparent implementation of the programme under which loans worth billions of rupees will be provided to the farmers.

All this augurs well surely as provision of interest free loans will enable the farmers to procure agricultural inputs, work still harder and produce more agricultural production to make the province prosperous as well as themselves in the process. MOHSIN AH SHAIKH Lahore