Pakistanis fail to exploit available resources
Country among top producers of ghee, rice, wheat, sugarcane, milk, onions,chickpeas, cotton, date palm, mango and oranges
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
By Mansoor Ahmad
LAHORE: Economists point out that Pakistanis somehow fail to exploit available resources in the country.
They said Pakistan is the largest producer of ghee in the world. The country stands second in chickpeas production, fourth in production of cotton, apricot and sugarcane, fifth in milk and onions, sixth in date palm, seventh in mango, eighth in tangerines, mandarin orange and rice, ninth in wheat and tenth in oranges.
Yet they said the country at one time or the other faces shortages, as the bureaucracy has no hold over hoarders, black marketers or smugglers.
They said the dairy potential of the country remains unexploited as the planners promote higher growth by increasing the milch animals instead of making efforts to increase the productivity of livestock at par with developed countries. They said the mindset of the government to increase agriculture output by four per cent every year would provide no relief to the consumers.
This productivity they added is naturally achieved every year subject to favourable weather. The government makes no contingency plans to take measures that could minimize the any adverse impact of the weather. Moreover they added the added in view of huge unexploited agricultural potential the productivity should be increased by 20 per cent annually for next five years in order to take advantage of high global commodity rates.
They said the performance in the industrial production is equally pathetic. They said Pakistan is the fourth largest producer and third largest consumer of cotton in the world. They said Pakistani textile industry consumes 16 million bales of cotton every year, out of which 85 per cent is exported. Thus only 4 million cotton bales are consumed for local needs while 12 million are used for exports.
Without taking into account the size of India itself, the volume of its economy, its polity and the age of Indian industry, the said economists went on to compare Pakistan with India.
They said India consumes 22 million cotton bales every year out of which only 50 per cent is exported and 50 per cent consumed locally. This implies that Indians consume 11 million cotton bales for exports and 11 million for local use.
The Indians earn over $18 billion from textile exports against $10 billion textile exports from Pakistan. If Pakistan textile industry matches the value addition attained by India our textile exports should have been over $20 billion. The textile industry alone is not responsible for this stalemate the protection provided to PTA plant also retarded blending textile products with manmade fibres.
They said the growth in automobile sector has also been lopsided. The car production in Pakistan, they added increased six times from 33,000 in 1999 to 200,000 units now.
The deletion of auto-components they added has remained almost stagnant. The foreign exchange saving they said is only 30 per cent even in vehicles where the localization of parts has reached 70 per cent.
They said 30 per cent imported parts of the vehicle add 70 per cent cost to the car. They said for low deletion models the imported component is 80-85 per cent. This they added explains one of the reasons for high import bill.
The previous government proudly claims that the import of raw material, parts and machinery has increased substantially during past eight years. These raw materials, parts and machinery added very little to exports but ballooned local consumption beyond reasonable limits. It looks strange that the government is providing undue protection to such industries at the expense of the consumers. They should be asked to either export certain percentage of production and part away from protection.
Despite high sugarcane production Pakistani consumers pay higher than the global sugar rates. The payments to the farmers are withheld due to lack of government writ. The cement industry has always operated on low capacity utilization to maintain high cement rates. Currently this sector is manipulating local cement rates on the strength of high export rates they are fetching from India and Middle East.
Pakistanis fail to exploit available resources
