Institutional collapse is the reason
With the country deeply hurt by terrorism and sectarian extremism, the loss of economic opportunities is what makes the matters even worse. Whereas power shortage is creating problems for the local industries and businesses, the exports are also hit hard due to a number of reasons, including high tariffs, substandard products, low quota in certain markets and now the latest one, food products that are contaminated with flies, pests and beetles making them unfit for human consumption.
Two different reports present a bleak situation. The first one says that mango shipments to the UK have been halted as fruit flies had damaged it to a dangerous level. The UK authorities have thus disposed off the shipments that had already reached there and have banned the import of mangoes from Pakistan. The second one says that Mexico has suspended rice shipments from Pakistan on allegations of pest infection. As both these products make up for a considerable chunk of Pakistan’s agricultural exports under the head of food products, suspension or an overall ban could mean a loss of millions of dollars which the country can ill afford at this time. For the UK and Mexico, or any country for that matter, implementation of strict quarantine measures is a standard procedure. However, not following the same by the exporting countries, in this instance Pakistan, puts it at odds with the importers. As to why this happened: it is not easy to blame anyone in particular except the government, which has failed to follow the standard protocols and hasn’t made any effort in upgrading the whole system of buying, storing, packing and shipping food products. This institutional collapse is not just limited to these few products, cases of the same nature have surfaced before as well, leading some to believe that the government is not interested, at least not serious enough, to take matters into its own hands and solve the problem. The ban on mango exports in the UK might prove to be a precursor to an even serious problem, that of a ban in the entire EU region. With our economy in the condition it is, we certainly can’t afford any setback of the sort.
Conspiracy theories can’t make up for the failure to meet standards of the importing countries. The argument that it takes up to 70 days to ship rice to Mexico or that the US exporters and certain Mexican importers want Pakistani rice exports banned because Pakistani rice costs at least $100 less than the US rice might have a grain or two of truth but they still can’t make up for the fact that certain measures were not taken to ensure that rice and mangoes were delivered to meet the criteria they were imported under. The government needs to take action now before any other market is lost so that damage to Pakistan’s reputation and risk of being slapped with an import ban can be averted.
