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Call to educate farmers about WTO implications
HYDERABAD (April 06 2004): Speakers at a seminar
emphasised the need for enhancing the agriculture
stakeholders' capacity before the World Trade
Organisation (WTO) regime sets in.
The capacity-building seminar on agriculture
sector was organised by the Action Aid Pakistan in
collaboration with the Green Rural Development
Organisation at a local hotel here on Monday
Roshan Malik from Action Aid Pakistan said that
farmers in the country lack the capacity to
understand the impact of the WTO regime and its
agreements related to agriculture.
Outlining details of the WTO working and its
impact on our agriculture sector, he called upon
newsmen to play the role of a catalyst between
farming communities and policy-makers.
Dividing developed and developing countries into
North and South, respectively, he said that the
North is highly subsidising its agriculture sector
while our allowable subsidies are equal to nil.
It clearly indicates that the government is not
attaching due attention and priority to the
agriculture sector nor it had taken any step to
prepare the local farming community for meeting
the upcoming competition from the developed
markets.
He said there is a need to debate the issue of WTO
from grass root level to the forum of parliament
and involving research institutes into the policy
issues.
He said if awareness of the issue created amongst
the farmers, they would be in a better position to
meet challenges of the WTO regime where the only
criteria would be price and quality.
Sohail Khan, a research scholar, discussing issues
of agreement on agriculture and trade related
aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs),
said that we should increase the domestic support
for farmers.
He said that the PBR act, in most cases, favouring
the breeders while ignoring interests and rights
of the small farmers. He said that farmers should
be protected against the IPRs regime.
He also emphasised the need for introducing the
seasonal tariff system at the time of arrival of
the crop to help farmers to get fair price of his
product.
Mehnaz Ajmal from Action Aid Pakistan, while
talking about the sanitary and phyto-sanitary (SPS)
measures of WTO, said that the standards in the
WTO on agriculture are very high.
She said that Pakistan is lacking in complying
with the SPS standards and it is a great challenge
for us to meet the standards to market our
products in the international market.
She said that laboratories should be established
in the country to check standards of our produce.
Courtesy Business Recorder |
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Pakissan.com; Advisory Point
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