ISLAMABAD, Jan 14: Prime Minister’s Adviser on Finance Shaukat Aziz has said that the battle against poverty can only be won if contribution of agriculture to growth is enhanced.
“The area under cultivation is the main constraint on higher agricultural growth in Pakistan. We cannot bring more area under cultivation because of non-availability of sufficient irrigation water,” he explained.
Speaking at the launching of a report on Human Development in South Asia by the Mehboob ul Haq Human Development Centre, the adviser said here on Tuesday that the country required extensive investment in water projects to increase farm productions.
Launching of several water conservation and augmentation projects in various parts of the country, he pointed out, were steps towards bringing more area under cultivation and providing a quantum jump to agricultural growth.
“The water-related projects worth over Rs170 billion are at various stages of implementation. Once these are completed, they will provide the jump to our agriculture on a sustained basis, which, in turn, will lead to rural development and poverty alleviation,” the adviser believed.
The report on human development 2002 focuses on agriculture and rural development, and calls for allocating more resources and ensuring governance related issues to remove poverty in the rural areas.
He pointed out that wide-ranging reforms had been introduced during the last three years to improve the agricultural productivity. “The benefit of reforms are quite visible,” he added and gave some examples.
Wheat prices in Pakistan, he claimed, were the lowest in the region and that nobody was complaining about shortage of wheat in the country.
He pointed out that there was an increasing role of private sector in wheat operations, specially when the government subsidies on the commodity were declining.
However, he said that there was a dire need to support a higher growth and greater stability of income and employment by increasing agriculture produce and by moving to market-based agricultural prices.
“People are pushed into poverty because of the volatility of income, and there is a general consensus among poverty experts and all poverty assessment studies that sustained economic growth is critical for poverty reduction,” he said.
The adviser said that there was a need to strengthen research, extend services and expand the role of the private sector in storage and agricultural support measures.
Mr Aziz said that expanding rural economic infrastructure, specially for irrigation, drainage and water resource conservation and management were also the important factors to remove poverty in rural areas.