KARACHI: The agriculture sector has been receiving massive inflow of money through export of rice, wheat and other farm products while their income further rose in nine months despite devastating floods that hit the country during the first quarter of this fiscal year.

July 2010 to March 2011 export details released by the State Bank may surprise many that big landowners were least affected with the floods which cost $10 billion to the country, but its impact was mostly borne by the poor of the agriculture-based rural areas.

The World Bank recently reported that the flood-affected people in Sindh, who comprise 23 per cent of the total provincial population, are living in a condition even worse than the poorest Africa.

The State Bank reported that rice exports alone pumped Rs135 billion during this period. Only the large landowners have capacity to export directly or indirectly their produces.

The report shows that higher commodity prices in the international markets were also one of the reasons for huge inflow of this liquidity.

The amount of export was the same a year before, but the quantity of rice exported was less this year.

According to the report, 2.6 million tons rice fetched Rs135 billion while a year ago, three million tons rice was exported to earn the same Rs135 billion, reflecting the benefit of global commodity price escalation.

The government allowed wheat export this year. It proved second largest commodity in the food group in terms of both quantity and income.

About 0.9 million tons wheat has been exported to fetch Rs30 billion.

Similarly, export of fruits earned Rs19 billion, vegetables Rs14.3 billion, fish and fish preparations earned Rs17 billion.

The entire food group exports earned Rs264 billion ($3.083 billion) compared to Rs205 billion ($2.455 billion), an increase of 28 per cent.

The report does not speak about losses as a result of floods.

The report also did not provide information regarding exports by provinces, but the World Bank report, along with many locally prepared reports, shows that Sindh was the worst hit by floods.