Advisers tell different stories on import of meat

Staff Report

LAHORE: Both the advisor to prime minister on finance and economic affairs and the advisor to the Ministry of Finance are telling different stories about the expected decision on duty free import of poultry meat in upcoming Economic Coordination Committee meeting, probably next week.

Sources in the Pakistan Poultry Association told Daily Times that economic advisor to the Ministry of Finance, Dr Ashfaque Hasan Khan, had himself called them to inform that he had prepared a summary on duty free import of poultry meat to be presented to the ECC in the meeting.

According to the PPA sources, Dr Khan said since the PPA had failed to arrest the price hike in poultry meat, the government had no option but to allow duty free import of poultry meat in the country. However, Advisor to Prime Minister on Finance Dr Salman Shah, when contacted, denied any such thinking on the part of the government.

“There is no such thing under consideration of the government,” he told Daily Times on telephone.

Sources in the PPA also referred to the latest issue of Economist, where a story under the title of “Twisted Tale” has narrated that the mad cow disease traveled to England from India back in 1960s and 1970s when “CJD-infected human remains may have been imported into Britain in the 1960s and 1970s from India, from which tonnes of bones and carcass parts came for use as fertilizer and animal feed.”

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