While reacting to complaints of fruit and vegetable exporters the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI) demanded the appointing of a dedicated person as in-charge at the Department of Plant Protection (DPP), Peshawar Office to streamline its workings.
In this regard, the FPCCI vice-president, Riaz Khattak, in a letter to the Secretary, Ministry of National Food and Security Islamabad for the Director General DPP to depute some dedicated person as in-charge of the its Peshawar Office in order to facilitate exporters.
FPCCI initiated the letter on complaints of fruit and vegetable exporters of Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa (KPK), who had been complaining since long that DPP officials were not co-operating with them, resulting in various problems to them while exporting consignments and also export consignment delays due to the slow phytosanitary process.
However, the Ministry of National Food and Security failed to update the FPCCI regional office KP on this matter, despite having sent two reminders on this subject to the Secretary, Abid Javed. It is pertinent to mention here, KP province is known as the hub of the horticulture sector and on daily basis a minimum 24 tons vegetables is exported in the off-season from Peshawar airport and this increases to 40 tons in the season. "We must realise the horticulture sector exports contributed to the national exchequer and it's the responsibility of the government to assist and facilitate them", he asserted.
FPCCI vice-president also urged the KPK government to devise export oriented policies for fruit, vegetable producers and provide infrastructure including processing units, modern cold storage facilities under the Public Private Partnership mode (PPP) in the upcoming 2016-17 provincial budget.