KARACHI: Chairman of National Business Group Pakistan and President Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum, Mian Zahid Hussain has lauded the efforts of Prime Minister Imran Khan to ensure food security and demanded that the results of these initiatives should be visible without delay.

Pakistan was a food exporter during the 1980s and 1990s but now it is importing food worth billions of dollars resulting in food inflation and this matter can be resolved by focusing on agriculture development, he said.

Mian Zahid Hussain said that the availability of food, water, jobs, energy, and other things have failed to keep pace with rising population. He said that twenty years ago 2400 calories were available for people in Pakistan which is now reduced to 2300 calories while people in Nepal have a per capita calorie consumption of 2800 and Bangladeshi people consume 2500 calories.

Similarly, he said, water availability has reduced to less than 1000 cubic meters per capita in Pakistan as subsoil water is also receding while the efforts to conserve water and reduce wastage has left much to be desired.

Annually water worth 20 billion dollars find its way to the sea which has become a major threat to agriculture, industry and the country, he noted. The demand and supply gap of water will jump to one hundred million acre-foot which will result in severe problems, he said, adding that the population in India and Bangladesh is increasing by one percent per annum while the ratio is over a hundred percent higher in Pakistan which is putting resources and infrastructure under pressure, slowing down services and increasing poverty.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021