Agriculture sector exhibits 3.1pc growth this year

25 Jun, 2012

Major crops accounted for 31.9 percent of agricultural value added and experienced a growth of 3.2 percent during the period with negative growth of 0.2 percent last year.

The significant growth in major crops is contributed by rice, cotton and sugarcane by 27.7 percent, 18.6 percent and 4.9 percent, respectively.

As per data of Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, minor crops contributed 10.1 percent value addition in agriculture and exhibited a negative growth of 1.3 percent during the year against 2.7 percent growth of 2011.

The livestock sector, which has 55.1 percent share in the agriculture, grew by 4 percent during this year while fishery sector grew by 1.8 percent as against last year's growth of 1.9 percent.

Forestry sector posted a positive growth of 1 percent this year as compared to negative growth of 0.4 percent last year.

All the crops sown make Pakistan an agricultural country and its performance is dependent upon timely availability of irrigation water. During this year, the availability of water as a basic input for Kharif 2011 (for the crops such as rice, sugarcane and cotton) has been 10 percent less than the normal supplies but 13 percent higher than last year's Kharif 2010 season.

The water availability during Rabi season (for major crop such as wheat), is estimated at 29.4 MAF, which is 19.2 percent less than the normal availability, but 15 percent less than last year's Rabi crop.

Copyright APP (Associated Press of Pakistan), 2012

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