Improvement in productivity: Minfal fails to start over Rs one billion livestock project

The Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock (Minfal) has failed to initiate a three-year livestock project worth Rs 1.696 billion designed to improve productivity of the sector, sources told Business Recorder on Friday.
It is learnt that the Ministry of Industries and Production had prepared PC-1 of the project and got it approved from the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec) in February 2006 for its implementation in June.
Minfal had taken up the matter with the Prime Minister contending that the project came in its purview and should be handed over to it for implementation. As a result, the project was handed over to Minfal in the beginning of June but unfortunately despite completion of all groundwork to implement the project, it failed to start it.
Though President General Pervez Musharraf has time and again claimed to bring about white revolution in the country through such projects and policy measures that could lead to the enhancement of milk production, the performance of ministries puts a serious question mark on the achievement of these ambitious dream.
The government's livestock development policy envisages double increase in the growth rate of the sector by enhancing meat, milk and wool production through a number of measures to achieve 6 to 7 percent target of livestock growth rate by 2010.
It is not clear when the project would be implemented, designed to involve the local community, identify livestock extensive areas in all provinces and Northern Areas, providing training to veterinary officers (VOs) and setting up veterinary clinics to enhance the livestock productivity, particularly meat and milk production.
Sources said that Minfal did not want to implement the project because it feared losing other slow moving projects, if the Ministry of Industries would have implemented the livestock project effectively.
They said that the project is aimed at improving the lot of the poor farmers and rural households because the Ministry of Industries wanted it to implement through Rural Support Programmes in collaboration with the provincial governments in those districts where RSP was already undertaking its micro-finance and soft loan initiatives to augment the efforts.