Government urged to assign task of boosting Halal products' export to commercial officials

All Pakistan Meat Processors & Exporters Association (APMPEA) has urged the government to assign its commercial officers abroad to contribute to the national exports by searching new markets for Pakistani Halal products. "We can easily enhance our Halal products' exports by making room in Turkish, Central Asian countries, Chinese, Indonesian and other countries," said APMPEA Chairman Nasib Ahmad Saifi.
While talking to Business Recorder here on Tuesday, he said that Pakistan as an Islamic country has all the potential to become a leader in this sector with special emphasis on Halal and processed meat.
Nevertheless, despite all these facts meat exporters of Pakistan are facing furious competition from their counterparts like India, Brazil and Africa.
Governmental support for meat export sector is scarce, even the procedures to handle meat exports are troublesome, Saifi alleged.
He said that the government should pay attention to these hiccups besides arranging repatriation of money of livestock exporters stuck abroad due to default of certain buyers.
APMPEA said that he had also discussed these facts and issues with the LCCI President Almas Hyder so as the issues could be raised at the appropriate forums, with his help for ensuring solutions.
Giving proposals to make room in the trillions of dollars Halal products market, Saifi said that practice of allocating Live Animal Export special quotas should be abolished and only value-added products of livestock should be allowed to export.
A ban on slaughtering of female animals should be imposed and a mechanism should also be placed for its effective implementation, he also proposed.
He said to fetch lucrative international markets meat processors require an ample quantity of livestock at a suitable price to process.
Growing population of the country has already exhausted the livestock supplies, over and above animal
smuggling has deepened the crises.
This issue can only be resolved through stoppage of livestock smuggling which is one of the important causes of hike in prices.
He also proposed that the present government should setup Halal zones in Cholistan and actual owners of Meat Processors & Exporters should be allotted land for livestock farming.
Advocating a better coordination between slaughter houses and quarantine department, APMPEA chairman suggested issuance of quarantine certificate by the department online and linking both the stakeholders for animal health data sharing to know the reasons for animal rejection. He was of the view that it may help identify the onset of an animal disease outbreak.
It is pertinent to mention that the Halal Meat Export industry is potentially very productive even in its current stage of infancy.
Almost all the stakeholders of Halal meat industry of Pakistan have invested their lifetime investments in this sector of producing export quality Halal meat for the world.
Pakistani exporters are directly competing with the global Meat industry giants by employing state of the art equipment along with quality world class services.
Infant but competitive and productive Halal Meat industry of Pakistan should be given due priority and privileges such as zero-rated taxation, facilitation and relaxations in various phases of production, transportations and Export should to make enable them to compete in global economy with more courage and confidence.
The Halal Meat industry has a potential of expanding the meat export four folds in no time, provided patronage by the government to this extremely neglected industry as well, he concluded.