Pakistan has 15.44 million hectares of suitable area for olive cultivation located in Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhawa, Balochistan and FATA. Pakistan has potential for its production as well as extraction of olive oil for consumption.
This was revealed during a launching ceremony of a study report titled "Market Analysis for Value Chain & Olive Oil Consumption in Pakistan" organised by the Punjab Economic Research Institute (PERI) of Planning and Development Department in collaboration with the Italian government and Pakistan Agriculture Research Council (PARC) here on Wednesday.
Member Punjab Planning & Development Board, Agha Waqar Javaid while speaking on the occasion said that agriculture was one of the priority development sectors of Punjab government which was fulfilling its commitments with all areas of agriculture especially the interest of farmers.
Olive sector has numerous potential in Pakistan particular province of Punjab. Punjab government is very much enthusiastic to promote olive sector development.
He said that Punjab government has recently launched Olive Development Project in Punjab province. In this connection the government was soliciting the support of private and corporate sector to join hands to promote olive oil extraction on economic basis, he added. He said that findings of this study would help to promote Public Private Partnership (PPP) in olive sector development.
Speaking on the occasion, Director PERI Dr Mumtaz Anwar said that institute was contributing towards policy making through evidence based researches. This study report was one of its kind in the field of agriculture sector to focus on market analysis for the olive sector development. Punjab P&D department was continuously providing support for undertaking such sort of research studies, he said.
Earlier, the PERI Chief of Research Dr Awais Tahir in his detailed presentation on the report explained that our local olive has enormous potential if the private sector may involve with public sector in processing and extraction of olive oil.
As it is emerging sector having a lot of potential and opportunities, so this is high time when we may improve all tiers of supply chain and value addition products, so that we may get comparative advantage of domestic olive industry having competitive/ internationally at par prices and quality of olive/ oil products, he added.