LAHORE: Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz has pulled off a first that no chief minister before her attempted: she promised 50,000 tractors to farmers within three years, a scale of support the province has never witnessed in its history.
Maryam Nawaz delivered the announcement while addressing a high-level meeting of the provincial agriculture department, where officials walked her through the performance of the Kisan Card programme and the province’s broader agricultural mechanisation drive. Maryam Nawaz said her government has given farmers genuine economic empowerment on a scale that no previous government achieved.
“No previous government has provided such a large number of tractors to the farmers,” Maryam Nawaz announced to the audience, making the project a landmark event in Punjab countryside.
Kisan Card Delivers Rs360 Billion
Focus Pakistan learnt that officials briefed the chief minister on hard numbers behind the Kisan Card initiative. The province’s government has so far distributed free-of-interest loans worth Rs 360 billion among the farmers, and the recoveries have been made at a remarkable rate of 99 percent, which shows that the farmers are paying back the money without much difficulty, as is generally feared in agriculture loan defaults.
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How the farmers employed the cash says a lot about itself. The farmers used 80% of the borrowed cash to purchase fertilizers, showing that the loan facility helped the farmers put the money into agriculture rather than using it on basic necessities. The price of urea was also controlled for more than two-and-a-half years.
Maryam Nawaz Outlines Development Agenda
Apart from the agriculture brief, there was another meeting of Maryam Nawaz, which was with the Speaker of Punjab Assembly Malik Muhammad Ahmad Khan. Maryam Nawaz also met Punjab Assembly Speaker Malik Muhammad Ahmad Khan and thanked him for his contributions to the provincial assembly.
“Target I have set is to provide relief to all the citizens of Punjab and take Punjab to great levels of development,” said Maryam Nawaz during the interaction.
Malik Muhammad Ahmad Khan complimented the performance of Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz, claiming that the results of her work speak volumes rather than being mere promises. “The performance of Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz is not confined only to words but it speaks in practice,” he remarked.
Can Punjab Deliver 50,000 Tractors?
The tractor announcement lands at a moment when Punjab’s rural economy has been under pressure from input costs and credit access. By tying the scheme directly to the Kisan Card’s loan-recovery track record, Maryam Nawaz appears to be betting that farmers will treat the tractors not as a handout, but as an extension of a financing system that has already built credibility through near-perfect repayment rates.
Whether the province can execute a 50,000-unit rollout within three years procurement, distribution, and verification across dozens of districts will now determine if the announcement becomes the historic legacy Maryam Nawaz is claiming, or another ambitious target measured years later against modest delivery.
