Developing livestock, dairy industry: PTA for devising policy with emphasis on meat export

Chairman Pakistan Tanners Association (PTA) Fawad Jawed has advised the government to devise a policy for developing livestock and dairy industry with greater emphasis on exporting meat instead of livestock.
Welcoming Federal Minister for National Food Security and Research Sikandar Hayat Bosan's move to ban export of live animals, he said that complete ban on export of livestock was the need of the hour as the country was fast losing its precious livestock creating a crisis like situation in the meat as well as leather industry.
Fawad said that on the pretext of export, massive smuggling of livestock was continuing from Pakistan to Iran, Afghanistan and other countries, which had resulted in skyrocketing prices of meat, hides and skins.
Fawad pointed out that due to smuggling the price of meat in Pakistan had gone up by over 200 percent in the recent years, besides badly hurting meat, leather and footwear industries.
He pointed out that leather sector's exports have gone down to little over one billion dollar from two billion dollars in the last couple of years.
Vice President, Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI), Gulzar Firoz said that PTA had been appealing and crying for the ban on export of livestock as it was badly damaging meat industry, besides creating severe shortage of hides and skins.
He said that everywhere in the world governments protected their value-added sectors in order to promote exports and to bring more foreign exchange instead of selling capital goods at cheap rates.