Private, financial sectors to change face of agriculture: Aurangzeb
Muhammad Aurangzeb, Federal Minister for Finance, has said that Pakistan’s current economic outlook can help our private and financial sectors to change the face of agriculture in the county.
He was speaking at the concluding session of Pakistan Agricultural Coalition’s conference ‘Agri Connections 2024’ at the Expo Center, Lahore on Thursday. “Robust growth in the agriculture sector, declining inflation rates, strong value of the rupee, strong remittance inflows, rising forex reserves, and a buoyant stock market are stable macroeconomic indicators underscoring the country’s improved economic outlook,” said the finance minister. He added that we are expecting to receive a tranche of $1bn from the IMF while the bumper rice crop brought us a comparable amount of dollars this year. The Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) is designed for investment promotion in the field of agriculture. “We want to facilitate farm machinery service providers and we need a major scale up of modern agri warehousing under the EWRs financing that allows agri commodities to be traded nationally and internationally,” said the federal minister. Meanwhile, Ahsan Rana, Associate Professor, LUMS, said that the country’s overly regulated seed system is not good for our agriculture sector’s growth. “Cumbersome procedures have made our seed system depend on govt, making Pakistan stay in lowest ranks in this domain according to World Bank,” said Ahsan. He said that compliance should be voluntary, enforcement should be limited to few aberrations, two-tier system for seed companies should be developed, and regulator should become a facilitator. Maria Saleem, GM Agri-Business, Fatima Group, said that per acre yield enhancement in wheat can trigger additional $18b by freeing up 5m acres on which cotton is cultivated. She added that Pakistan can earn $1.6b by planting Canola/raya on 5m acres saved for wheat area as Pakistan imports 4m tons edible oil worth $4b annually.
