By Qudsia Bano ISLAMABAD, Feb. 28 (INP-WealthPK): Sunflower oil accounts for 11% of all oil produced locally. Paying special attention, the government has launched a subsidy program to boost the sunflower oil output. Sunflower has a short growing season (100-120 days), grown about twice a year, and fits well into various crop rotations. The Punjab Agriculture Department has invited the farmers to apply for an Rs15,000 subsidy on per-acre demonstration plots. The subsidy is provided as part of the Prime Minister's Agriculture Emergency Program. The subsidy – intended to boost the oilseed production – is available to farmers in Bahawalnagar, Bahawalpur, Bhakkar, Dera Ghazi Khan, Khanewal, Layyah, Lodharan, Mianwali, Multan, Muzaffargarh, Okara, Rahim Yar Khan, Rajanpur, Sialkot, and Vehari districts. The farmers will also be obligated to plant sunflowers on three additional acres. Another reason to encourage the farmers to switch to sunflower farming is to reduce the country's import of vegetable oil, which has climbed by 11 percent from 2.98 million tonnes in 2014-15 to 3.31 million tonnes in 2018-19. Pakistan imported $3.2 billion worth of edible oil in 2020, according to one estimate. According to the Pakistan Economic Survey 2019-20, sunflower was planted on 257,000 acres in 2018-19 and 219,000 acres in 2019-20, with 2.748 million tonnes of edible oil imported in FY2020 costing Rs321.535 billion ($2.046 billion). Sunflower farming can help reduce the demand for edible oil imports and save money. Dr. Ehsan Sana Ullah Khan, Engineer at the National Agriculture Research Council (NARC), told INP-WealthPk that major hybrid varieties of sunflower seed in Pakistan were Parsun-3 and SMH-0297. The current major production areas of sunflower are coastal areas and Gilgit Baltistan. According to Ehsan, the current sowing area volume of sunflower accounts for 80% in Sindh and 20% in Punjab. Collectively, sunflower has been grown over 110 lac hectares. He said these verities had enough potential to yield around 4000-5000kg per hectare, but due to poor management and lack of seed mechanisms and management, such as cleaning, grading and packaging, these seeds were not available to the farmers due to which most of the seeds were imported costing the state kitty around $3-4 billion annually. “If the government takes the initiative to produce these verities of seeds and ensures their easy availability at the low cost, then we can save a huge amount of foreign reserves’’, Dr. Ehsan said. He also said the government had allocated a Rs11 billion project for edible oilseed development under its Agricultural Emergency Program, while an amount of Rs150-200 million was allocated for oilseed research department. If the government properly works on these projects and focuses on seed management and support mechanism, provides subsidies to the farmers, and makes low-cost machinery available to the farmers, then overall annual yield of edible oil, specifically of sunflower, can be increased drastically and Pakistan being an agrarian country can increase the GDP by lowering its imports.