The government is required to adopt a proactive approach for a sustainable growth of agriculture sector, which has become savior to economy in COVID-19 pandemic crisis.
Agricultural experts said that every crisis has an element of opportunity and amid COVID-19 crisis the opportunity exists to transform and grow Pakistan's agriculture sector that can help secure enough indigenous food availability and also help attain GDP growth.
As per expectation, Pakistan's GDP growth is being expected to contract negative 1.5 percent against the target of 4 percent for FY20, while as per the State bank of Pakistan's projections next fiscal year growth will be 2 percent.
In this situation, economists and experts believe that Pakistan can achieve a sustainable economic growth by supporting agricultural sector, which is the one of the largest contributor in economic growth.
The country's agricultural sector constitutes some 19 percent of GDP, supports direct employment to 42 percent population and indirect support to more than 60 percent of population.
Entire world economies are facing sudden and surprising impact of COVID-19 in the form of partial to complete lockdowns and economic indicators tumbling across the nations with stock markets crashing, industries closing and services sectors declining.
The present lockdown crisis has proofed that agriculture is the one sector that can provide support to economy as during this crisis demand of food items increased and now across the world is realizing this fact and putting the necessary financial support to the agricultural sector to ensure food security.
Experts said that for country like Pakistan, agriculture and ensuring Food Security for a population base of more than 200 million is extremely vital. Moreover, in situation when export orders getting cancelled, local consumption of retail sector tumbled, the Agriculture Sector, in addition to ensure food security, can also help support GDP growth with all required measures and plans to be taken by government of Pakistan.
The government has already decided massive wheat procurement with an investment of Rs 280 billion and this injection of funds will help the entire agricultural chain by providing the required liquidity for next crop cycle of Kharif.
However, experts believed that, this is not enough and in order to ensure a proactive approach for strong agricultural sector growth for upcoming Kharif season amid present scenario of COVID-19, the government is required to ensure availability of all key inputs like seed, fertilizer, pesticide, water availability, etc.
According to industry sources fertilizer particularly urea is the most critical input of the agricultural production that faces regular shortages in the country. Last year urea offtake was peaked at 6.2 million tons as against production capacity of 6.5 million tons.
The government with the support of fertilizer plants has managed to provide a big relief to the farmers in the form of GIDC reduction and urea prices declined by Rs 400 from peak of Rs 2100 per bag.
Last year record urea offtake was at the higher urea prices and now as the prices are reduced by Rs 400 per bag, it will provide strong elasticity for another robust consumption year. Pakistan, having installed capacity of 6.5 million tons, is self-sufficient to meet robust urea demand in the country, they added.
However, out of this about one million tons of urea production capacity is closed due to gas issue. Three plants Fatimafert, Agritech and Pak Arab are closed owing to winter gas curtailment and in order to avoid shortage of urea and achieve healthy agricultural growth, the closed production capacity is vital to be operational to meet upcoming Kharif offtake.
Industry sources said that higher competition in the sector will not only ensure constant product availability and competitive prices to the farming community, but will also help to save precious foreign exchange in present situation, when export proceeds dwindling due to COVID-19.
They said that restoration of local closed urea production of fertilizer must be priority of the federal government to ensure the food security by sufficient supply of agricultural inputs.
In the same lines, availability of quality cotton seeds and other Kharif crops in the lockdown scenario is also important and relevant agricultural ministries of provincial must ensure availability of seeds.
They said that trade disruption among different countries is also affecting imports of pesticides which are critical for well being of Kharif crops especially cotton.
Most of the country pesticides import either raw material or finished items are from China and the government shall ensure no trade restrictions and lockdowns affect the import of pesticides.
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