Agri growth, strong rupee value reflect improved economic outlook: Aurangzeb

LAHORE: Federal Finance Minister M Aurangzeb has said Pakistan’s current economic outlook can help private and financial sectors to change the face of agriculture in the county.

He was speaking at the concluding session of Pakistan Agricultural Coalition’s conference ‘Agri Connections 2024’ at the Expo Centre here on Thursday. “Robust growth in the agriculture sector, declining inflation rates, strong value of the rupee, strong remittance inflows, rising forex reserves, and a buoyant stock market are stable macroeconomic indicators underscoring the country’s improved economic outlook,” said the finance minister.

He added, “We are expecting to receive a tranche of $1bn from the IMF while the bumper rice crop brought us a comparable amount of dollars this year. The Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) is designed for investment promotion in the field of agriculture. We want to facilitate farm machinery service providers and we need a major scale up of modern agri warehousing under the EWRs financing that allows agri commodities to be traded nationally and internationally.”

Meanwhile, Ahsan Rana, Associate Professor, LUMS, said the country’s overly regulated seed system is not good for agriculture sector’s growth. Maria Saleem, GM Agri-Business, Fatima Group, said that per acre yield enhancement in wheat can trigger additional $18 billion by freeing up 5 million acres on which cotton is cultivated.

Hasan Raza of Neelum Seeds said that investment in seed and modern technology is need of the time because public sector has limited resources and globally private sector leads the seed sectors.

Nabeel Chaudhry, CEO Thai Union, said that Punjab government has few million acres of Brackish land which is good for shrimp farming. “We can earn $2billion by exporting shrimps if we use one lac acres of this Brackish land for shrimp farming,” said Nabeel.

PAC Co-founder and Strategy Advisor Kazim Saeed summed up the conference by saying, “We have heard new, financially sound arguments at this conference from the business community for investing in agriculture.”

In the end, Chairman PAC Hadi Ali Rizvi thanked all the sponsors and exhibitors who showcased future of corporate and innovative farming in Pakistan, state-of-the-art technologies, equipment, and solutions that are driving the future of agriculture.