LAHORE: Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif on Wednesday launched the fourth phase of the Green Tractor Scheme through a digital balloting process and opened the application portal for the fifth phase, as the provincial government announced plans to provide 19,500 tractors to farmers during the current fiscal year.
The chief minister pressed a button to conduct the balloting. The first tractor under Phase IV went to Masood Khan, son of Lal Khan, from Attock.
According to a briefing given at the launch, 10,000 tractors of 50 to 65 horsepower will be provided under Phase IV, with the Punjab government offering a subsidy of Rs750,000 per tractor. Under Phase V, 9,500 high-powered tractors ranging from 75 to 125 horsepower will be offered with a subsidy of Rs1 million each.
The government has allocated Rs17.6 billion for the Green Tractor Scheme. The briefing said 24,000 tractors had already been provided to farmers under the programme with a subsidy of Rs1 million per tractor.
More than 213,637 farmers applied for the Green Tractor Programme, of whom 128,757 were declared eligible for the balloting after verification through the Punjab Land Records Authority and Nadra.
Farmers owning five acres or more of agricultural land were eligible to apply. District-wise tractor quotas were fixed according to the proportion of cultivated land, with districts including Bhakkar, Jhang, Lodhran and Vehari having relatively higher shares.
The chief minister congratulated successful applicants and inspected tractors being offered under the scheme, including locally manufactured 90-horsepower and locally assembled 100-horsepower models. Punjab has seen, for the first time, local manufacturing of 90-horsepower tractors and assembly of 100-horsepower tractors, according to the briefing.
Five locally manufactured models have been included in the scheme, and the initiative has also contributed to an increase in tractor manufacturing and sales in Punjab, provincial Agriculture Minister Ashiq Kirmani said in his briefing.
The briefing set the spending against the previous two decades. It said only 10,000 tractors had been provided to farmers over the previous 20 years, while 35,000 tractors had been distributed during Ms Nawaz’s two-and-a-half-year tenure. Similarly, Rs3 billion had been spent on agricultural mechanisation over two decades, compared with Rs20 billion during the last two-and-a-half years.
Mechanisation is only one part of the pressure farmers are under. Growers have protested over pricing and procurement in the past year, including a march over support prices, while the province has also expanded mobile veterinary services and signed up to wider cooperation with the ADB on water, health and agriculture. Access to tractors is also a factor in residue management, where Punjab has reported a 70% drop in crop residue fires.
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