Pakistan's agriculture depends on how successfully we can compete in the global market; FPCCI

PESHAWAR: Chairman Regional Standing Committee Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FPCCI) Ahmad Jawad has said 'we are an agrarian economy and government must invest on that through effective road map for achieving the desired results."

Talking to newsmen, Jawad said the global order is changing fast and consequently challenges facing agriculture and becoming increasingly demanding. The future of the sector and its contribution to the economy will depend on how agriculture is positioned to meet the challenges of market, internal and external.

In Pakistan, agriculture, which account around 21 percent of GDP and provides more than 50 percent of jobs, has a special role to play in growth, poverty reproduction, and environmental protection. We saw in recent years, agricultural output growth has varied especially in the current fiscal year.

With limited chance of increasing land and water resources, future growth has to come largely from diversification in line with market demand and productivity increase, which will require major changes in systems, policies, and institutions for agriculture.

And the most important change required is redefine of the role of Government in agriculture, which would be crucial in making agriculture competitive in the global market.

Jawad said the appropriate role of government is to become the enabler of smoothly functioning markets through institutional and regulatory reforms that facilitate private sector activities and market efficiency, where market failure was not an issue and where intervention in the past led to marked inefficiency.

The effective strategy may be adopted now to reduce the government's role through policy reforms and strengthening market liberalization; including reshape its investments and public expenditure on agriculture through effective public private dialogue. However government should make an effective plan on the important domain of quality control and implementing internationally accepted norms and regulations.

This role of the public sector has become all the more important in the light of WTO agreements and regulations.

Future of Pakistan agriculture depends on how well we can compete successfully in the global market and for that quality control to comply with international norms and standards is crucially important."