About 1.8 million tonnes of onion and 4 million tonnes of potato production targets have been fixed for the financial year 2013-14 to fulfil the domestic requirements as well as for export purposes.
During the last fiscal year (2012-13), onion production was recorded at 1.57 million tons against the set targets of 2 million tons, showing negative growth of 23.15 percent as compared to the year 2011-12, an official said on Thursday.
Meanwhile, about 3.76 million tonnes of potatoes were produced during the period under review as against the set targets of 4.15 million tons showing decrease of 9.23 percent against the fixed targets, he added.
Besides, he said that during the year 2013-14 government has set to produce about 500,000 tonnes of sunflower to fulfil the domestic requirements of edible oil.
Similarly the production of sunflower and potato recorded an increase of 4.6 percent and 4.4 percent respectively against the production of year 2011-12.
However, the onion crop failed even to reach the level of production of previous year and decreased by 9.2 percent.
He said further sunflower production was recorded at 296,000 as against the set targets of 650,000 tons, witnessing a decrease of 54 percent.
He said that gram pulse production targets for the year 2013-14 has been fixed at 650,000 tons as compared to last year’s achievement of 673,000 tons adding that gram pulse production recorded an increase of 3.54 percent as compared to the production of last corresponding year.
Gram crop recovered from very bad harvest of last year with a massive increase of 137 percent largely because of favourable weather during the season.
The official said that minor crops mainly contribute towards kitchen items so their performance generally influences the Food Price Index and Sensitive Price index.
To arrest the inflation trend and ensure indigenous food security there is need to focus on increased production of oilseeds, vegetables and horticultural crops, he added.
Target of 1.8m tonnes of onion set for 2013-14
