EDITORIAL (July 01 2009): Dr Mohammad Ehsan-ul-Haq Tasneem, Member, Planning Commission for Food and Agriculture, has said that the key imbalances in all sectors of the economy need to be rectified through an appropriate emphasis on agriculture, agro-business, industrial competitiveness, and on new initiatives for technology, energy and infrastructure in the 10th Five-Year-Plan (2010-15).
The agriculture and storage infrastructure would be improved at a total cost of Rs 38 billion. Further, the private sector would be the primary engine of economic growth and agricultural development. This would be achieved through vertical integration of high-value agriculture and livestock products.
Dr Ehsan also talked about the acute water shortage in the country, and disclosed that an integrated approach would be adopted, which would be guided by principles of equity, efficiency, participatory decision-making, sustainability, and accountability.
Public-Private Partnership needs to be vigorously pursued with respect to agriculture marketing and storage-and-supply chain infrastructure to enhance the effectiveness of public sector programmes. We hope the implementation of all these ambitious agriculture and agro-business projects would be achieved, with dedication, in a time-bound and cost-effective framework.
Dr Ehsan has rightly said that the emerging food crisis, in the wake of global food insecurity, has highlighted the need to revitalise Pakistan's agriculture sector to ensure sustainable food security in the country. The plan unveiled by the Member, Planning Commission, is comprehensive in its sweep and intent, and needs to be implemented in letter and in spirit.
Being an agrarian economy, Pakistan needs to put maximum emphasis on agriculture and agro-business, with its huge value-added potential. While over 60 percent of agriculture value-added is accounted for by such food crops as wheat, rice, maize, millet and sorghum, the share of major crops has remained substantially unchanged, due, mainly, to the paucity of inputs and research.
The share of food crops, particularly of wheat and rice, has increased over the last decade, though the share of cotton and sugarcane has fallen, which is reflective more of the movement of relative prices, than of production levels. Secondly, agriculture's share in the country's GDP has fallen by more than half, ie from about 53 percent in 1950, to approximately to 21 percent at present, due largely to the shifting policy thrust of successive governments.
However, despite its constraints, the agriculture sector has remained the single largest sector of the economy, and a credible guarantor of poverty alleviation. Infrastructure constraints in almost all sectors of the economy have warped the country's economic growth potential.
And the country's water and power sector has failed to deliver the required services, mainly because of infrastructure constraints. A serious lack of required storage capacity, whether for water or agriculture produce, has been mainly responsible for our failure in attaining sustainability, not only in agriculture, but also in the water and power sectors.
According to one estimate, some 30-maf of water, worth about $60 billion, flows down into the sea each year, unutilised which has not only harmed the country's agriculture sector; but it has also become a major cause of our failure in harnessing the country's huge hydropower potential. We have received huge funding from international lending institutions over the decades, though its targeted and timely utilisation has left much to be desired.
As Dr Ehsan has said, the challenge confronting the country today is to make agricultural growth pro-poor and equitable, for which a well-developed and efficient non-farm sector (agro-based, rural enterprises) is essential. Agriculture is the best hope for the revival of Pakistan's economy.
Successive governments in the country have, unfortunately, put greater stress on the formulation of policies and projects, than on their timely and cost-effective implementation. This has been true as much in agriculture, as in other sectors of the economy. There is an urgent need to activate the implementation arm of the government to achieve goal-oriented results. It is to be hoped that the implementation of the 10th Five-Year Plan, with its ambitious goals in agriculture and agro-business, will help revitalise the economy.
