Economic pundits are agreed that livestock and dairy sectors have remained immune from the impact of the global recession. Consumption of food items is, after all, the very last item in a household budget that is likely to be negatively affected due to a recession.
Thus any attempt of the government to extend support to this sector in an effort to make it an engine of growth within the current year will bear fruit. Those who insist that manufacturing has higher value addition and, therefore, the focus must be on higher value adding products must accept that in today's climate it is manufactured products that are suffering from a loss of market.
"It is an irony," the Economic Survey 2007-08 argues in complete support of this view, "that the entire government machinery has focused attention on major crops, that too on only four crops (rice, cotton, wheat, sugarcane), which account for only 34 percent to agriculture value added, while livestock, which accounts for 52 percent, has never received similar attention." Skeptics would, no doubt, argue that the difference in treatment is attributable to the fact that the major crops represent a cohesive pressure group, with its members sitting in the national and provincial assembly, while those involved in the livestock sector are neither cohesive nor indeed politically powerful. The fact that the government does not even bother to calculate the number of people employed by this sector also reflects the fact that little attention has been paid by the government to this sector.
The Survey adds that "in order to achieve higher sustained growth in agriculture value added, it is absolutely necessary to give due attention to the livestock and dairy sector (whose performance does not depend on Mother Nature) to achieve multiple objective of attaining food security and well as poverty reduction." Livestock's contribution to the GDP has been steadily rising - from 417,120 million rupees in 1999-2000 to 599,217 million rupees in 2007-08.
Between 1999-2000 milk production rose by 6 million tonnes however increase in beef during these years was only half a million tonnes and mutton actually declined from 649,000 tonnes to 566,000 tonnes. Poultry output rose significantly during these years - from 322,000 to 554,000 tonnes which accounts for market price adjustments between poultry and beef/mutton and the difference in the percentage price escalation between the two. However these developments are insignificant in comparison to India. India's milk production rose from 79.4 million tonnes in 2001 to 95.5 million tonnes in 2007.
While part of the rise maybe attributable to the fact that cows are considered sacred in India, yet the fact remains that the country has a viable livestock sector and is considered to be a major producer of the world livestock and dairy sector and is included in statistics released by Denmark, the world's leader in livestock and dairy production as well as exports. Pakistan is not.
One would have hoped that in line with the recommendations made in the Economic Survey the present government would have begun formulating as well as implementing some policies in this regard. A viable policy must envisage (i) incentives which are comparable to the major crops which still receive substantial subsidies for inputs for example fertilisers; (ii) ending legal imports and smuggling of foreign dairy products freely available in the markets of major cities and (iii) tax incentives that would strengthen this sector.
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