Seed sellers: Registration of 100 companies may be cancelled

In the first round, 50 companies will be scrutinised for poor performance.

ISLAMABAD: A large number of cotton seed companies are likely to be deregistered by the Federal Seed Certification and Registration Department over their dubious activities and poor performance regarding provision of seeds.

To this effect, the Federal Seed Certification and Registration Department had constituted five committees for monitoring and evaluating the registered seed companies. These committees were constituted on the directives of a joint action group headed by the Punjab governor in a meeting held on December 26 last year at the Ministry of National Food Security and Research.

According to a source in the ministry, the registration of over 100 cotton seed companies are likely to be cancelled over their failure to meet the criteria.

There are three committees for Punjab, which include the one specifically for Rahim Yar Khan. There is one committee for Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan and one for Sindh and Balochistan. The committees were given a specific schedule for carrying out the evaluation and monitoring of seed companies.

They were tasked to evaluate the performance of companies over the past three years and find out whether they had hired professional staff as committed, possessed the physical infrastructure as per the feasibility report, submitted tax returns and provided quality services with no complaint registered against them for violations of the Seed Act.

It is expected that in the first round about 50 seed companies will be identified and assessed for their working and efficiency.

Additionally, the working group has already identified 48 dormant seed companies and decided to serve a one-month final show-cause notice to them for re-activation or else their cases will be placed in the next meeting of the working group for the cancellation of registration.

The Federal Seed Certification and Registration Department will have to wait for the reply of the companies until the expiry of the deadline. It is expected that 30 out of 48 dormant seed companies will be deregistered in the first go.

The next working group meeting will be held around February 15 to 20. Dormant seed companies will be registered after following a proper procedure as laid down in the rules.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 25^th, 2015.

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