Act for reviving sick industrial units soon: Tarin

FAISALABAD - Federal Government has allocated Rs 2 billion for R&D activities in the agriculture in order to increase sustainable growth rate of this significant sector.
This was stated by Federal Minister for Finance Shaukat Tarin while addressing the gathering of inaugural ceremony of Business Incubation Centre as chief guest in new Senate Hall of the University here on Wednesday morning.
While expressing his concerns over declining growth rate in agriculture, he said that from 1960 it used to decline up to one percent in every decade which needs to be stabilised by investing on R&D and entrepreneurship activities. Sha-ukat Tarin told the house that government is going to establish four outstanding research centres of major crops; two in Punjab and two in other provinces aiming to net the growing poverty in the country.
He told that government is spending Rs 110 billion on water projects particularly on small and big dams in the country. He asked the UAF water experts to design a national incentive programme to adopt water conservation technologies being designed at UAF. He was of the view that Business Incubation Centre is a right platform to transform the ideas of academia into action through collaborative efforts of industrial and business communities. He said that today a major problem of a small farmer is shortage of storage capacities of his produces to which a middleman used to exploit and gain a big share of his profit so government is determent to spend Rs37 billion during the next five years to expand the storage capacity in the country.
He told the gathering that government is investing on establishment of service centres and model farms at village level in order to boost the local business activities at grass root level. The chief guest underlined the need to export fresh fruits and graded vegetables to Middle and Fareast states as there is an immense potential of profit through such exports.
US special ambassador to Pakistan Robin Raphael told that Pakistani scientists are second to none and have their meritorious services for humanities. She urged the need to transform the innovative ideas into action with a proper business and marketing plan through Business Incubation Center. She told that inception of UAF as University, Washington State University of US played a vital role and there are many avenues to progress to be discovered as Washington State University is popular one in agriculture and could help UAF in many ways.