Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FPCCI) Vice President Riaz Khattak has said Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s (KP) economy is based on agriculture, as 80 per cent of its people live in rural and pre-urban areas, where about 85 per cent of the population directly or indirectly earns their livelihoods from agriculture.
Chairing a meeting in FPCCI Regional Office on Tuesday, Riaz Khattak said agriculture and livestock contribute around 21 per cent to the provincial GDP. Thus, any improvement in this sector can directly elevate the lot of an overwhelming population in the province. In recent years, KP economy has been badly damaged because of unrest in the region.
He said that at the macro level, a thriving agriculture sector can check inflation and can be to the benefit of every citizen. Additionally, diversification in horticulture, with its potential to provide more income per acre at higher labour inputs and rural based agriculture processing units, offers promising avenues for increasing the income of rural households.
The FPCCI vice president said that the KP is short in food commodities, hardly producing 40 per cent of local requirements and meets its requirements through import from other provinces. Thus, there is need to focus on research in both agriculture and livestock to standardise technology that can synchronise with the prevailing environmental, particularly in the climate change scenario.
FPCCI Regional Standing Committee on Horticulture Exports Chairman Ahmad Jawad said that KP farmers have been complaining for a long time that the allocated agriculture funds had not been fully utilised and that there was a need for a mechanism to use such funds in a proper way to achieve the desired agriculture yield and improve financial position of poor farmers.
“While before every year’s budget, the KP government listens to all the stakeholders in order to incorporate their proposals and suggestions, the process has never been fully followed in practice. Food security is a growing challenge in the days to come in the province as this province has so far failed to produce enough food commodities to meet the people’s demands,” he remarked.
Jawad said KP small farmers have the capacity to deliver if they are provided the required budget and guidance on how they would use the modern techniques, seeds and pesticides. He said the farmers need proper guidance and education from the agriculture department.