ISLAMABAD, June 8: The agriculture sector has recovered well this year by registering 5pc growth compared to the last year’s 1.6pc despite marginally less production of rice and cotton and negative growth in maze, barley rapeseed and mustard.

Major crops have bounced back from the last year’s negative growth of 4.1pc and posted a positive growth of 7.6pc, mainly due to historic production of wheat and vibrant performance by sugarcane crop, shows the Pakistan Economic Survey 2006-07 released by the government here on Friday.

In 2004-05, agriculture sector had grown by 6.7pc, 1.7pc more than this year.

This year’s historic wheat production of 23.5 million tons is 10.5pc higher than the last year’s 21.27 million tons and 0.4pc higher than this year’s target of 22.5 million tons.

Wheat contributes 14.4pc to the value added in agriculture and 3pc to the country’s GDP.

Sugarcane production has reached 54.75 million tons compared to last year’s 44.6 million tons, showing 22.6pc increase. The crop’s share in value added of agriculture and GDP are 3.5pc and 0.7pc, respectively.

The 13 million bales cotton production this year has remained mostly unchanged in comparison to 13.02 million bales of last year. Rice production at 5.4 million tons was marginally less than 5.5 million tons produced last year. Despite the lower yield, higher demand abroad for Pakistan Basmati rice and high international prices are expected to surpass the last year’s export earning from Basmati rice.

The growth in three major crops included maize, barely and rapeseed and mustard have decreased by 4.5pc, 5.7pc and 13.4pc respectively over the last year.

However, gram, another major crop, has exhibited an impressive growth of 75.4pc this year due to the increase in intervention price of the crop and good rains in “Thal” area.

Minor crops registered a weak growth of 1.1pc while it was 0.4pc last year. However, amongst the minor crops, production of potato increased by 67.2pc, mung and masoor pulses improved by 21.5pc and 17.9pc respectively.

Production of chillies, onion and mash pulse decreased by 49.6pc, 14.3pc and 3.6pc respectively, compared to last year.

Livestock registered a strong growth of 4.30pc over the last year’s impressive growth of 7.5pc due to increase in the livestock and poultry products.

The country’s performance in the forestry has been dismal this year as well as forestry decreased by 3.8pc. Last year, forestry had decreased by 43.7pc.

In Pakistan, only 5pc of total land area is under forest, ranking it under Low Forest Cover Countries. Of this total forest area, commercial forest is just one-third (32.8pc) and the rest (67.2pc) is under protected forest, performing soil conservation, watershed protection and climatic functions. Existing forest resources are under severe pressure to meet the fuel wood and timber needs of the country and wood-based industries including housing, sport, matches, boat making and furniture industries.