Pakistan meat export up by 15pc

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has exported 153,543 animals during the current fiscal year thus increasing the country's meat export to 15 percent, Minister for Religious Affairs Syed Khursheed Ahmad Shah said on Friday.

Replying to a question raised by PML-N's Shireen Arshad Khan in the National Assembly, he informed that the exported animals included 48,680 cattle, 50,000 buffalos, 54,716 sheeps/goats and 147 camels.

In order to facilitate and encourage the livestock export, the government decided that no permit was required from the Ministry of Livestock and Dairy Development for commercial export of live animals for meat purposes, he said during the question hour session.

"This ministry in consultation with the Ministry of Commerce determined 2,53,000 quantity of exportable live animals for meat purpose through Open Policy Quota under the existing export policy," he added.

To a supplementary question he said that Pakistan at present had around 110,055 million animals in the country and recently the meat production had increased by 15 percent.

"At present we are self-reliant in meat," he said.

In order to improve and increase the supply of meat and animals in the country, the government has initiated a PSDP funded project "Livestock and Development for Meat Production" with a total cost of Rs.1,520 million.

This project has established 1,31,77 feedlot fattening farms (7,740 beef and 5,431 mutton farms) having 1,63,977 beef and 2,17,701 mutton animals and trained 728 farms on feedlot fattening operations.

Replying to another question, he said that the rising price of meat was due to an inflationary trend in the country. There is an overall increasing trend in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) over a period of time.

Its impact has been reflected in overall increase in the price of essential commodities, and meat is not exception, he added.

To another question about the steps taken to stop illegal fishing, he said that the federal government had introduced a penalty for tampering of vessel-based Vessel Monitoring System.

In the revised Deep Sea Fishing Policy of 2009, the government also introduced a mesh size of 90 mm (stretched) or more with no additional bags, for the purpose of reducing the size mesh in the code end of the trawl net to avoid illegal fishing, he said.

He said the government of Sindh, during July last year had totally banned the use of code net with a mesh size of less than 1.5 cm of the trawl nets operating in the provincial territorial waters.