CURRENTLY, the sheer amount of post-harvest losses, between 30 to 40 per cent of total yield — or around Rs100 billion in financial terms — makes 28 varieties of fruits and 30 of vegetables non-competitive in international market.
That is precisely why Pakistan has not been able to claim even one per cent of total international horticulture trade, despite having huge agricultural advantages — fertile lands, abundant sunshine, four weather variations and, at least so far, better water supplies.
What makes it even worse is the fact that these losses, their magnitude, reasons behind them and solutions are well-documented and the country has periodically devised plans to contain them too. However, such plans fell out of official favour at various stages of conception or execution for some unknown reasons.
One such latest example is the National Trade Corridor Improvement Project (NTCIP). It was conceived in 2005 — thanks to former Commerce Minister Humayun Akhtar Khan and economic advisor of the then government Dr Suleman Shah. However, the Planning Commission dumped it at the end of last year after putting in six years of man-hours, consultancies and money, and did so without identifying reasons of the dumping.
Theoretically, the NTCIP still exists, but is gathering dust at Pakistan Horticulture Development and Export Company (PHDEC) — the preparatory and monitoring agency of the project. The World Bank, which was supposed to finance it in the first place, has refused to do so because no one from the government took required interest in it.
The project was aimed at creating a national corridor for horticulture products for domestic and international (Central Asian States) trade.
This Rs12 billion project was aimed at constructing 56 cold storages, 39 pack-house and controlled atmosphere storages (for temperate fruits), six laboratories and grading facilities along the national highways and some cluster areas, like for citrus in Sargodha and mango in Multan region.
Put together, these cold storages were to have a capacity of 123,300 tons of fruits and vegetables — or around nine per cent of total production. The state was supposed to progressively help (because the project was a public-private partnership) extent capacity of storages and further facilitate movement of perishable products within and without Pakistan. Instead of extending, the government seems to have killed the entire project in first phase of its life.
The project was supposed to serve three purposes; cutting post-harvest losses down (11 per cent from the current up to 40 per cent), improving quality (through grading and cold storages) and bringing down cost of production by saving losses.
All three factors have served as major restrictions on horticulture production. Currently, the horticulture products, which have served as engines of growth in many countries around the globe, has not been able to create a niche in the world market.
Even domestically, most of the horticulture products have to travel from North, where they are produced, to South, where population centres are. So, the country needs this kind of trade corridor with cold storage, grading and packing facilities — to create and ensure quality of the product.
Once these kinds of quality and trading points are established within, only then exporters are expected to compete in the world market. The horticulture sector has single-handedly lifted many economies around the globe. There is no reason why Pakistan cannot be one of them with right kind of policy and infrastructure. Even with six per cent of land under horticulture crops, the country is producing crops roughly worth $3 billion at current market factor. If the farmer loses crops worth $900 million at the post-harvest stage, no kind of policy incentive can put things right but infrastructure.
The project was originally to be implemented by the government, with the help of the World Bank. Later, it was molded into a private-public partnership, with government acting as a facilitator — providing some temporary tax relief, marginally reducing or picking up mark-up on loans or helping private sector acquiring land where ever a problem arises — and one of its agency monitoring the implementation. All of the rest was to be done by the private sector.
Apart from the usual reason of “project was conceived by the previous government, so we do not owe anything to it,” another factor, privately quoted by some officials, who have been part of the project, is that the agency (PHDEC) that prepared the project and was supposed to monitor it, has fallen out of bureaucratic favour on allegations of corruption and mismanagement.
Apart from the truth behind the allegation, one needs to argue that such national projects must not be held hostage to allegation and counter allegations.
Even if they are true, they need to be separately investigated. Punishing projects, rather than the managers can hardly be termed as a good national policy because the cost is borne by the nation rather than guilty individuals.