Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has urged all the stakeholders of the agriculture and livestock sectors to exploit full potential of the Punjab province for achieving the target of an additional $2 billion dollars export by 2015.
He was speaking at a meeting arranged by the Punjab Agriculture and Livestock Departments here on Thursday evening. Both the departments are planning to launch fully traceable agricultural and livestock products in the world market through forthcoming International Green Week (IGW), scheduled in January 2012 at Berlin, Germany.
In this connection a meeting and display of fully traceable agricultural and livestock products were organised to showcase selected products to be exhibited at IGW, Germany. The function was also addressed by Frans Muller, CEO METRO Global, Punjab Board of Investment and Trade (PBIT) Vice Chairman Rizwan Ullah Khan, representative of Star Farm Consulting Company Hans Peter and Secretary Agriculture Punjab Arif Nadeem. Punjab Minister for Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock Ahmad Ali Aulakh was also present on this occasion.
The Chief Minister said that Pakistan in general and Punjab in particular has vast fertile land, industrious workforce, most suitable weather and abundant water. But, he regretted Pakistan has negligible share in the international agricultural produce market despite being fifth largest milk producer and fifth largest agricultural produce in the world. He said that international trade of livestock sector alone was of $600 billion and we don't have even one per cent share in it.