LAHORE:ThePunjabAgriculture Department held a consultation with farmers` representatives here on Wednesday to make official subsidy programme more effective.

The government has allocated Rs4 billion for subsidizing farm inputs in the ongoing financial year.

For improving the existing subsidy model and removing complaints of f armers in this regard, the department has decided to get input from the stakeholders and as a hrst step invited the farming community for their views, Agriculture Minister Malik Nauman Langrial told Dawn af ter the consultative session.

He said now the industry people would be invited for their sugges-tions before holding a joint consultation with representatives of both the farmers and industry and finalizing the subsidy model.

According to him, the department is working on introducing a smart application to replace the earlier SMS method for validating and processing the subsidy vouchers placed in the fertilizer bags.

This would make the subsidy process easier, better and more transparent for the convenience of farmers, adding it was the first time that all farmer organizations have been consulted for any project.

The meeting was attended by Rana Iftikhar of Anjuman Kashtkaraan Punjab president, Shaukat Chadhar of Kissan Board Pakistan secretary-general, Rao Tariq of Kissan Ittehad secretary-general, director generals of Agriculture Extension and Water Management Dr Anjum Ali and Malik Muhammad Akram, respectively, and other senior officers.

Mr Langrial said that the farmers were f acing problems due to the previous government`s agreements struck with the World Bank. The incumbent government, he claimed, has made some changes to the agreements to improve the system and help farmers get subsidies in easier and transparent manner.

He told the participants that out of Rs1 billion first tranche of the subsidy at least Rs930 million have been distributed and now the pendancy, if any, is being cleared. He said that the second tranche of Rs2 billion would be released to the department within a couple of days.