KARACHI, Aug 23 (Online): Chairman of National Business Group Pakistan, President Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum, and All Karachi Industrial Alliance, and former provincial minister Mian Zahid Hussain on Tuesday said food self-sufficiency is impossible in the presence of repeated fertilizer crisis.
The hoarding mafia will continue to make the lives of farmers miserable and leave people hungry for their own profit, while the government will be forced to import billions of dollars worth of grain every year, he said.
Mian Zahid Hussain said that Pakistan is self-sufficient in the production of fertilizer but there is a crisis throughout the year, which is an outcome of profiteering and mismanagement.
Talking to the business community, the veteran business leader said that fertilizer is available only to those farmers who are willing to buy it on the black market at high prices.
The common farmers who cannot pay premium always get insufficient fertilizer while the subsidy of billions of rupees at the expanse of taxpayers goes into the coffers of the mafia.
The business leader said that a few weeks ago, the government had fixed the price of urea at Rs1950 per bag and manufacturers had agreed to it, but now the price has been increased unilaterally by four hundred rupees which is exploitation of the farmers who have already been devastated by the floods.
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