Dismal performance cause of concern for agrarian economy. PHOTO: INP/FILE
The agriculture sector – which contributes 21.4% to the country’s GDP – has posted a lower than expected growth of 2.1% in fiscal year 2013-14 (FY14) compared to 2.9% in the previous fiscal year, the Economic Survey of Pakistan 2013-14 released on Monday revealed.
Federal Minister for Finance Ishaq Dar said the sector’s dismal performance is disturbing for the government. “We will look into why the growth remained low,” said Dar.
Sindh Abadkar Board President Abdul Majid Nizamani said the sector was not on the government’s priority list, citing it as the reason for the dismal performance.
Nizamani added that the sector’s issues would continue to haunt the government unless major inputs including fertiliser were provided at cheaper rates to the farmers.
Meanwhile, Farmers Association of Pakistan (FAP) Director Rabia Sultan commented that the development should be a cause for concern.
“The government needs to figure out why the sector has been performing badly since the last two years,” Sultan said.
For FY12, the growth of agriculture was 3.6%. The poor performance can be attributed to the low growth in the livestock sector, which contributes a lion’s share of 56% in the agriculture sector.
Livestock exhibited a growth of 2.9% in 2013-14 compared to 3.5% in the previous year.
However, the growth in agriculture sector was strongly supported by the output of essential crops. These crops – having a 26% share in the agriculture sector – has experienced a growth of 3.7% in fiscal year 2013-14 against the growth of 1.2% during the same period last year.
The important crops performed well on the back of positive growth in the production of rice, maize, wheat and sugarcane —production of each of these increased by 22.8%, 7.3%, 4.4% and 4.3%, respectively. However, a decline of 2% was witnessed in the production of cotton.
Other crops that contribute 11.6% value addition in agriculture sector witnessed a decline of 3.5% during 2013-14 against a positive growth of 6.1% during the same period last year.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 3rd, 2014.
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