LAHORE – Muhammad Aurangzeb, Federal Minister for Finance, has said that Pakistan’s current economic outlook can help private and financial sectors to change the face of agriculture in the country.
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 Pakistan is expecting to receive a tranche of $1bn from the IMF while the bumper rice crop brought 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,” he said.
Ahsan Rana, Associate Professor, at LUMS, said that the country’s overly regulated seed system is not good for the agriculture sector’s growth.
“Cumbersome procedures have made our seed system depend on the government, making Pakistan stay in the lowest ranks in this domain according to the World Bank,” he said.
Maria Saleem, GM of Agri-Business, Fatima Group, said that per acre yield enhancement in wheat can trigger an additional $18 billion by freeing up 5 million acres on which cotton is cultivated.
She added that Pakistan can earn $1.6 billion by planting Canola/Raya on 5 million acres saved for the wheat area as Pakistan imports 4 million tons of edible oil worth $ 4 billion annually.
Hasan Raza of Neelum Seeds said that investment in seed and modern technology is needed at the time because the public sector has limited resources and globally private sector leads the seed sectors.
Nabeel Chaudhry, CEO of Thai Union, said that the Punjab government has a few million acres of Brackish land which is good for shrimp farming.
“We can earn $ 2 billion by exporting shrimps if we use one lac acres of this Brackish land for shrimp farming,” said Nabeel, adding that India is earning more than $ 6 billion through shrimp exports.
Sam Knowlton, a global expert on regenerative agriculture, said that the decline nutritional quality of rice and wheat has been identified by a recent study while we lose 20 to 40 per cent of all crops to pest and disease each year despite increased pesticide use.
PAC Co-founder and Strategy Advisor Kazim Saeed summed up the conference by saying that we have heard new, financially sound arguments at this conference from the business community for investing in agriculture.
In the end, Chairman PAC Hadi Ali Rizvi thanked all the sponsors and exhibitors who showcased the future of corporate and innovative farming in Pakistan, state-of-the-art technologies, equipment, and solutions that are driving the future of agriculture.
