Wholesome food now out of 68pc Pakistanis reach: WB

ISLAMABAD: Wholesome food has gone out of majority of Pakistanis reach as runaway food inflation continues to challenge government’s writ as well as policies, a World Bank official said.

“Currently, 68 percent of Pakistan’s population is unable to afford a healthy diet,” said Namesh Nazar, an Agricultural Economist at the World Bank.

She was highlighting how food inflation could lead to heightened food insecurity and malnutrition at the sixth webinar in the Pakistan Development Policy Series (PDPS) 2021 last week.

Organised by Consortium for Development Policy Research (CDPR) in collaboration with the World Bank, the moot focused on the nature of food price inflation in Pakistan, especially in the fresh produce, milk, and meat markets.

World Bank’s Nazar added that additionally, high food inflation could reduce consumers’ purchasing power, especially consumers from poor households with fewer resources to spend on other essential goods, such as healthcare and education.

The PDPS is a series of policy talks inviting discussion and debate on key reform areas critical to Pakistan’s economic, social and development growth.

It explored how government interventions impact food prices, and outlined key policy changes necessary for the government to play a more supportive role in ensuring stable prices and supplies.

The webinar started with an introduction to PDPS by World Bank Country Director, Najy Benhassine, and Chairperson CDPR, Dr Ijaz Nabi.

This was followed by a discussion, moderated by Amina Bajwa, Member of the Prime Minister’s Strategic Reform Unit.

The session learnt that between May 2020 and 2021, prices of food and non-alcoholic beverages increased 14.83 percent with urban centers seeing a higher rise (15.3 percent) compared to rural areas (12.8 percent).

Discussing the government’s efforts to stabilise food prices, Asad Rehman Gillani, Secretary Agriculture Punjab, identified initiatives undertaken by the Punjab government in recent years to encourage greater agricultural productivity, decrease information asymmetries through technological interventions, and reduce post-harvest losses of fresh produce.

Adding to this, Omar Hayat Gondal, a serving officer of the Pakistan Administrative Service, and a Ph.D. candidate at the Washington University in St Louis, explored how government interventions in food markets can often have a distortionary impact.

He elaborated on the process through which the government sets and monitors prices and identified how the structure of the fresh produce value chain allows middlemen to make substantial profits, while farmers are not fairly compensated. Gondal highlighted the need to reform the middlemen’s role, through policy informed by meticulous documentation of the value chain.

Shariq Vohra, President Karachi Chamber of Commerce, emphasised on the need for greater documentation of the agrarian economy to understand the role of middlemen, transporters and wholesalers in driving up prices of food items.

Shaukat Mukhtar, General Secretary of the Dairy Farmers’ Association Karachi explained the burden of the government’s price setting policies was often borne by farmers and consumers. Mukhtar outlined how milk prices set by the government did not take into account rising input costs associated with dairy and livestock production, particularly the feed, which must to be imported.

In her closing remarks Amina Bajwa conluded that while the government’s interventions in agricultural markets were necessary to improve yields, moving forward the government must make space for public-private partnerships and greater value-chain development.

She also recognised the need to integrate work produced by research institutions in agricultural policy-making so as to develop evidence-based policy.