Tax policy debates in agriculture tend to stall in the same way. One side argues that exemptions on mechanisation and inputs would expand production. The other argues the revenue cost is unaffordable. Both positions are plausible, and neither is quantified.
Evidence changes the shape of that conversation. Cost-benefit and econometric analysis can estimate what an exemption on mechanisation, irrigation equipment, or livestock feed would cost in forgone revenue, what it would return in output and productivity, and how those effects distribute across smallholders and larger commercial operators.
What matters is that the analysis answers the question decision-makers actually face, which is rarely whether an exemption is good in the abstract. It is which items, at what rate, for how long, and with what monitoring.
Reform is a political process, and analysis does not settle it. But well-specified evidence narrows the range of defensible positions, and gives the officials advancing a reform something durable to stand on.