Agri Transformation Plan to enhance yield, reduce prices: PM

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan Thursday said that Agriculture Transformation Plan was a comprehensive strategy to enhance agriculture produce to suffice the country’s food needs besides reducing milk and meat prices.
The prime minister, chairing a meeting to review progress on Agri Dashboard and Dashboard on monitoring of projects and agreements signed during the foreign visits,
said the government was bringing transformation to enhance the agriculture yield as food security was among its priorities.
The prime minister also assured that the impediments in the implementation of the agreements signed during the foreign visits would be removed to ensure execution the projects of national interest without any delay. The Agri Dashboard would help the government to timely point out and avert any food crisis by providing statistics of demand and consumption of the agriculture commodities. The dashboard would also help contain the price hike of eatables with the cooperation of provincial governments. The Prime Minister directed to complete the final stages of the Agri Dashboard on priority basis within the stipulated time and make it fully operational as soon as possible.
Prime Minister Imran Khan said the government was working to set out an eco-friendly roadmap for Pakistan to save its future generations from the negative effects of climate change and global warming. “We will devise sustainable policies on environmental protection to materialize the vision of a Clean and Green Pakistan,” the prime minister said in his address at the launch of the first locally-made electric motorbike (e-bike), here at the  lawns of the Prime Minister House.
The launch of e-bike was part of the government’s five-year Pakistan Electric Vehicles Policy 2020-2025 approved last year and envisaged targeting a robust electric vehicle market with a 30 percent and 90 percent share in passenger vehicles and heavy-duty trucks by 2030 and 2040, respectively. PM Imran Khan said the governments of economically strong countries always worked on long-term policies, rather than those making decisions based on an election-to-election strategy to gain votes and promote mafias. “We have to take action today to resolve the upcoming challenges,” he said, adding  that deforestation and pollution were the manmade problems that were leading to horrendous effects on human lives. Prime Minister Imran Khan also mentioning an impending threat of the 4th wave of COVID-19 in view of recent rise in positive cases in country urged masses to continue the use of face masks and get them vaccinated as early
as possible. “Our [coronavirus] cases, after a downslide, have started rising up. We fear that Indian [Delta] variant is coming. I appeal the nation to use face masks, which is an easiest way, and take protective measures, we can protect ourselves from the fourth wave of COVID19,” Imran Khan said in his remarks telecast live.