ISLAMABAD, Feb 3: The federal ministry of food agriculture and livestock (Minfal) has started consultations with provinces and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) for preparing a medium-term outlook for major commodities that would help understand impact of global prices on local markets.

The Agriculture Prices Commission (APCOM) and the Agriculture Policy Institute will be the focal agencies for this exercise once the consultation process is completed, an official of Minfal said.

Minfal, in collaboration with the FAO, had also organised a workshop on medium-term outlook for major commodities in consultation with the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) here a couple of days back. Merritt Cluff, senior commodity specialist, FAO-HQ, Rome has also held meetings with PARC and Minfal officials on the process of developing the outlook in accordance with international standards this week.

Both the sides have discussed the increasing and decreasing trends in the international food and agriculture market.

The policy implications of global prices and the effect of market behaviour on global import and export of food items have also been discussed in detail.

The official said due to increasing urban population in the developing countries, prices for value-added products, including meat, dairy and other processed food items, would continue to grow and thus would increase in the trade volume among developing countries. For Pakistan, it was vital to have a midterm outlook for commodities.

Provincial governments, social sciences divisions of PARC, Agriculture Policy Institute (API), Pakistan Horticulture Export Development Board (HEDB), Agriculture Livestock Marketing (ALMA), Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP) have already given their presentations to Minfal regarding information gap and proposals for cooperation with the Trade and Commodities Division of FAO to improve information access and analysis tools.