Quality testing labs to be set up to improve quarantine services

A network of quality testing laboratories is being set up in public sector to improve quality of grains, check livestock diseases and products, fertiliser and agro-chemicals, residue testing and strengthening of plant and animal quarantine services.
Agriculture has been identified as one of the priority area by the government to improve economy and address unemployment and increasing poverty problems.
According to official sources the performance of agriculture sector has improved satisfactorily, depicting a growth rate of 4.2 percent during 2002-03.
Earlier with generous credit support to farmers, increasing support price of wheat and intervention to enable cotton growers to get good price for seed cotton has helped to improve agriculture growth.
Now the government is reviewing on going policies to cover areas like food security, increasing productivity, commercial agriculture, imports substitution, income diversification and export orientation.
The emphasis is being laid on raising productivity and profitability of the farming community enabling, the country to raise the living standard of rural masses and also reduce levels of poverty.
Pakistan has faced severe drought in the past few years so a strategy is being formulated to ensure that natural resource base as land and water are exploited in a sustainable manner.
Arrangements are being made to arrange adulteration free availability of farm inputs in co-operation with provincial governments.
Special measures are underway to reduce cost of farm inputs and role of private sector is being enhanced in procurement of agriculture commodities as it would promote public-private sector partnership.
The institutional services including agricultural research and extension are geared to raise productivity and profitability of farmers and address issues faced by the farming community at field level and the services in agricultural marketing are being renovated.
Some new markets are planned to be established in areas where marketing structure is weak and government will facilitate a process that may help in removal of market imperfections and creating an enabling environment for farmers to market their produce at reasonable prices.
Capacity building on WTO issue is an area of high priority and for the purpose, the Agricultural Prices Commission is being restructured to be called as Agricultural Policies and Prices Commission.