Information Minister Azma Bokhari credits Maryam Nawaz with a Rs4,500 wheat price, a farmers’ bank and 50,000 tractors; the bank has no published timeline yet, and the price was announced by the federal government.
LAHORE: Punjab’s government is presenting a dedicated farmers’ bank, a Rs4,500 wheat price and an expanding tractor scheme as proof that its agriculture agenda has moved from announcements to the field. Farm leaders say the measure of that claim will come at harvest, when the province must actually buy their wheat.
Information and Culture Minister Azma Bokhari said on Thursday that Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif’s decision to set up a Kisan Bank fulfilled a longstanding demand of growers. Farm representatives from across the province had welcomed the measures, she said, adding that development and relief were “no longer confined to official files or social media” and were reaching people at the grassroots.
Maryam Nawaz unveiled the Apna Kisan Bank on Wednesday, her birthday, which she dedicated to farmers, in an address to small, medium and large growers from across Punjab. She paired it with a Rs17bn subsidised financing programme that the government says will support cultivation on about 5 million acres, Profit reported.
Loans of up to Rs10m will be interest-free, those up to Rs30m will carry 2pc interest, and those up to Rs50m will carry 5pc, routed through the Punjab Urban Unit. The chief minister also said her government had resisted pressure to impose an agricultural income tax.
What has not been published is how the bank itself will work. Neither the announcement nor Bokhari’s statement gave its capital, ownership structure, launch date or whether it will seek a licence from the State Bank of Pakistan, which every deposit-taking bank needs. Punjab already owns the Bank of Punjab, and the federal Zarai Taraqiati Bank has lent to farmers for decades; the provincial government has not explained how the new institution will differ from either.
Bokhari said the chief minister had answered farmers’ demands by deciding to fix the wheat support price at Rs4,500 per maund (40kg).
The figure was announced in Islamabad. Food Security Minister Rana Tanveer Hussain told a press conference on Monday that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had set Rs4,500 as the indicative price for the 2027 crop after consulting all provincial governments, Dawn reported. That is Rs1,000 higher than last year’s Rs3,500. Punjab has said it will coordinate with the centre to implement it.
For the province that grows most of Pakistan’s wheat, implementation is the whole question. In April, Pakistan Kissan Ittehad president Khalid Mahmood Khokhar said the private companies selected to buy wheat had not procured any grain, and that farmers had sold at about Rs2,200 a maund in 2025, well below a production cost the union put at Rs3,410 in 2024.
Farm groups have welcomed the new price but say procurement must follow. Agri Forum Pakistan chairman Ibrahim Mughal has argued Rs4,500 will not cover rising costs of fertiliser, diesel, seed and land rent and called for Rs5,000, while Markazi Kisan League secretary general Rizwan Mahmood said the benefits would materialise “only if the government actively purchases the crop”, The News reported. Growers are already feeling the squeeze at sowing time.
“For the first time in Punjab’s history, 50,000 tractors are being provided to farmers, while one million farmers are directly benefiting from the Kisan Card,” Bokhari said.
The 50,000 figure is a programme target rather than a delivered total. When the chief minister launched phase four of the Green Tractor Scheme and opened the phase-five portal in September, about 24,000 subsidised tractors had been handed over, with 10,000 more in phase four at a Rs750,000 subsidy each and 9,500 higher-horsepower units in phase five at Rs1m each.
The Kisan Card, which lets smallholders buy fertiliser, seed and pesticide on interest-free credit without middlemen, has the stronger record. More than one million farmers now use it, and the government on Wednesday raised the fertiliser credit limit from Rs30,000 to Rs33,500 an acre. Officials said in July that Rs360bn had been disbursed with a 99pc recovery rate, Business Recorder reported; Bokhari put recovery at 100pc, which she said showed the chief minister’s trust in farmers had been repaid.
Bokhari said young people were receiving laptops and scholarships while farmers were being given tractors, super seeders and Kisan Cards. The super seeders, which sow wheat directly into rice stubble, matter beyond agriculture: they give farmers an alternative to burning residue, a significant contributor to the smog that pushed Lahore’s air quality index to 419 on Thursday morning.
The chief minister has also announced agro-parks in Sargodha, Bhakkar, Khanewal and Okara for grading, storing and processing mangoes, citrus and potatoes, and a Potohar package to promote olive cultivation.
The farm push comes as the province manages pressure at the other end of the wheat chain, having approved a Rs10bn flour subsidy this month. A higher support price helps growers but, if the government buys at that rate, raises the cost of keeping flour affordable in cities like Lahore.
Bokhari said Punjab under Maryam Nawaz was “changing and progressing”. Farmers will be able to judge that for themselves in April, when the new crop reaches the market and the procurement centres either open or do not.
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