KHYBER-Pakhtunkhwa is losing 32 per cent of the water allocated to it under the National Water Apportionment Accord due to the current carrying capacity of its aging, and lack of new, infrastructure, reveals an official report.

Out of the allocated 8.78 million acres feet (MAF) of water, the province is able to draw about 5.97 MAF of its share. Not only is 14pc of the floodwater collected under the accord not fully used; all other water resources freed up from the national water accord’s ambit, for the province, are also not utilised.

Thus, one-third of KP’s arable land depends on rainfall in a climate that is semi-arid to arid. Another one-third (2.66m acres) of the province’s arable land, called culturable waste land, is out of cultivation due to various reasons including water logging and non-availability of irrigation water. Of the total culturable land of 4.9 million acres, one third is irrigated, one-third is rain-fed and one-third is culturable waste.

This scenario shows that more land and water resource development is desperately needed for the province’s food security, and economic development.

The World Bank has decided to enter the province, after a substantial gap, with a project to prepare future investments in water resource development. The bank is currently in the process of approving a soft loan of $160m to the province to enhance water management, productivity and climate resilience of irrigated agriculture in potential areas.

The loan from the International Development Association (IDA) is expected to be approved by the World Bank executive board in early 2019.

The World Bank’s last engagement with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, for a total of $21m, focused mainly on restoration and rehabilitation of the irrigation network from the secondary to the tertiary level.

The new project will contribute to the development of the agriculture sector by working on water as an important input and limiting factor to productivity and overall production.

More specifically, it will support six key priority areas of the government for the sector: improving performance and functionality of the delivery system and reducing water wastages; equitable water distribution; increasing financial sustainability of the irrigation system management; increasing climate resilience; increasing productivity and promoting high value agriculture in terms of production, processing and marketing; and strengthening the agriculture department for improved service delivery and governance.

The irrigation infrastructure in KP has suffered from deferred maintenance, and according to the report, some canals in the province are more than a 100 years old. They suffer from frequent bank breaches, bed erosion and souring due to floods in addition to the normal wear tear of a canal. The poor condition and subsequent leakages and wastages are estimated to be responsible for 25pc water logging.

Unlike Punjab, the reliance on ground water in KP is minimal; therefore water lost would contribute towards water logging and salinity. The silt deposition raises the level of the command area for which canal beds need to be raised to continue providing the required volume of water.

The government has prepared a priority list of 22 schemes, costing about $140m, for rehabilitation of the system.

Key priority areas of the provincial government, as highlighted in the ‘KP Integrated Development Strategy of 2014–18’ and the ‘KP Agriculture Policy and Strategy—a ten-year perspective’ (2014–24), are improving, among others, production, processing, and marketing; diversification into high-value agriculture; adaptation to climate change; on-farm water management; development of new water resources; rehabilitation and modernisation of the existing irrigation and drainage infrastructure; and governance.

The irrigation department of the province has reported that 10 to 15pc of canal outlets are tampered or illegal. This creates inequity among growers in the system and affects the productivity of the farmers mainly at the tail end.

In KP, farmers’ productivity and most crop yields are generally low compared to other provinces. This could be attributed to large number of (80pc) small landholdings lacking scale and purchasing power; labour shortage due to migration to cities and abroad and insufficient mechanisation to offset this shortage of skilled labour; insufficient private sector participation and services; lack of financial services; weak public sector research and extension services.

The World Bank says the province has pockets with unique agro-climatic conditions, ideal for horticulture production. These include, among others, citrus, dates, pome fruits, potato, tomato, and onions.

However, the current share of the subsector in the total cropped area is only six per cent. With improved access roads to the main domestic markets, Afghanistan and air links to the Gulf and Central Asian countries, KP could potentially further capitalise on this comparative advantage.

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, June 25th, 2018

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