Jun 09, 2022: Agriculture sector in the country during fiscal year 2021-22 grew by 4.40 percent as against the set targets of 3.5 percent and last year’s growth of 3.48 percent.

According the Pakistan Economic Survey 2021-22 launched here Thursday, agriculture growth is mainly driven by high yields, attractive output prices and supportive government policies, better availability of certified seeds, pesticides, and agriculture credit.

The crops sector outperformed and posted a growth of 6.58 percent during the period under review against 5.96 percent of same period last year, besides the sub-sector level, important crops, other crops and cotton ginning depicted a significant growth of 7.24 percent, 5.44 percent and 9.19 percent, respectively, against last year’s growth of 5.83 percent, 8.27 percent and -13.08 percent.

The growth in production of important crops namely cotton, rice, sugarcane and maize are estimated at 17.9 percent, 10.7 percent, 9.4 percent and 19.0 percent, respectively. The cotton crop increased from 7.1 million bales reported last year to 8.3 million bales during 2021-22.

Meanwhile, the rice production increased from 8.4 million tonnes to 9.3 million tonnes, sugarcane production increased from 81.0 million tonnes to 88.7 million tonnes, maize production increased from 8.9 million tonnes to 10.6 million tonnes respectively.

While, wheat production in the country decreased from 27.5 million tonnes to 26.4 million tonnes. Other crops having a share of 13.86 percent in agriculture value addition and 3.14 percent in GDP, grew by 5.44 percent on the back of an increase in the production of pulses 29.82 percent, oil seeds 24.75 percent) vegetables 11.52 percent, fruits 1.53 percent and fodders 0.36 percent.

According the Survey, the livestock recorded a growth of 3.26 percent in 2021-22 compared to 2.38 percent during the same period last year, fishing sector grew at 0.35 percent compared to a growth of 0.73 percent in the same period last year.

The forestry sector posted a positive growth of 6.13 percent against the negative growth of 0.45 percent last year.

According the Survey, domestic production of fertilizers during the period from July-March, 20212-22 increased by 1.9 percent over the same period of last year. This increase in domestic production of fertilizer is mainly due to the running of two LNG-based plants, Fatima Fertilizers and Agritech Limited, from September 2021 to March 2022. Although the import of fertilizer decreased by 6.2 percent, however, the total availability of fertilizer slightly increased by 0.5 percent. There was a decrease in the total offtake of fertilizer nutrients by 3.6 percent.

On the other hand, tractor production grew by 13.5 percent during the period under review as output reached 41,871units as compared to 36,900 tractors last year.

During the period from July-March, 2021-22 banks disbursed Rs 958.3 billion which is 56.4 percent of the overall annual target and 0.5 percent higher than the disbursement of Rs 953.7 billion made during the same period last year.

The Economic Survey revealed that the outstanding portfolio of agricultural loans has also increased by Rs 30.9 billion from Rs 601.8 billion to Rs 632.7 billion at end of March 2022 as compared to the same period last year. In terms of outreach, the number of outstanding borrowers reached 3.2 million in March 2022.

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