Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has announced a mega Kissan Package under which farmers will be provided subsidized loans worth 1800 billion rupees.

“As compared to the previous year the increase in these loans is 400 billion rupees,” the premier said announcing the package in Islamabad on Monday.

He said that to facilitate the farmers, the government would provide a subsidy of over ten billion rupees to waive off mark-up fees on the loans availed by farmers of flood-affected areas.

The premier said the youth of rural areas who wanted to invest in agriculture sector would be provided loans worth 50 billion rupees, adding that the government would provide Rs6.4 billion as a subsidy on mark-up of loans.

He said five billion rupees had been reserved to provide subsidy on markup of loans that will be provided to landless peasants of the flood-affected areas.

PM Shehbaz said that the government was giving cheap gas for DAP and after successful negotiations with the fertilizers producers the price of DAP had been reduced by Rs2500 per bag and the new price of DAP had been fixed to Rs11,250 per bag.

“There are around 0.3 million agriculture tube wells in the country, and the government has planned to solarize these tube wells for which a massive subsidy will be provided,” he said and added that a flat rate of Rs13 per unit would be charged on agricultural tube wells.

The premier said that 1.2 million bags of certified seed would be provided to the farmers of flood-hit areas, adding that Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) would be regularized for investment in agriculture sector.

“The SME’s interested in investing in this sector will be able to get loans on subsidized rates and for this purpose we have fixed 6.4 billion rupees,” the premier said and added that under their modernization scheme 10 billion rupees were fixed.

He said keeping in view the increased prices of new tractors, the import of used tractors had been allowed and now the farmers could import second-hand tractors up to five years of their manufacture date.

“The subsidy on the duty of five-year old tractor will be 50 percent while on a three-year old tractor the subsidy will be 36 percent,” the premier said adding that duty had been reduced from 35 percent to 15 percent to attract new entrepreneurs in the field of tractor manufacturing.

The prime minister also announced the import of 0.5 million tons of Urea saying that the import of 0.2 million tons of Urea had been completed while the remaining would be completed soon. “For this purpose, we have provided a subsidy of Rs30 billion.”

PM Shehbaz said that the import of 2.6 million tons of wheat had been allowed out of which one million tons had already reached Pakistan while the remaining 1.6 million tons would be procured to avert any kind of shortage of the commodity in the country.