ISLAMABAD

The overall performance of agriculture sector has recorded a growth of 2.9 percent during 2014-15 as compared to 2.7 percent last year due to government’s positive steps in all agriculture sub-sectors.
During the period, crops witnessed a growth of 1.0 percent, livestock 4.1 percent, forestry 3.2 percent and fishing 5.8 percent.The agriculture’s crop sub-sector component which includes important crops, other crops and cotton ginning showed growth of 0.3 percent, 1.1 percent and 7.4 percent respectively.
According to the budget document, important crops, which carry great significance by having a share of 25.6 percent in agricultural value addition, has experienced a meager growth of 0.3 percent in fiscal year 2014-15 against 8.0 percent during the same period of last year on account of revised production estimates of wheat crop.
The important crops such as cotton and rice production recorded positive growth of 9.5 percent and 3.0 percent respectively. Other crops contributed 11.1 percent in value addition of agriculture recorded an increase of 1.1 percent during 2014-15 against negative growth of 5.4 percent during the same period last year that is due to increase in production of pulses, vegetables and fruits which recorded positive growth of 13 percent, 2.5 percent and 0.9 percent respectively on account of better water availability, more fertilizer offtake and relief in prices of agriculture inputs and enhanced availability of agriculture credit.
Similarly, the data further revealed that livestock sector which contributes 56.3 percent in agriculture recorded a positive growth of 4.1 percent in 2014-15 against 2.8 percent growth during same period last year while fishing sector contributed 2.1 percent in agriculture value addition recorded a growth of 5.8 percent as against last year’s growth of 1.0 percent.
Moreover, forestry sector posted a growth of 3.2 percent this year as compared to the negative growth of 6.7 percent last year.
It is mentioned here that Pakistan has two crop seasons, Kharif, being the first sowing season, starting from April-June and harvested during October-December. Rice, sugarcane, cotton, maize, moong, mash, bajra and jowar are Kharif crops.
The Rabi, a second sowing season begins as on October-December and is harvested in April-May. wheat, gram, lentil (masoor), tobacco, barley and mustard are Rabi crops.
Pakistan’s agricultural output is closely linked with supply of irrigation water and during 2014-15, the availability of water for Kharif 2014 stood at 69.3 (MAF), showing an increase of 5.8 percent more than Kharif-2013-14 and 3.3 percent more than normal supplies of 67.1 MAF.
The water availability during Rabi season 2014-15 is estimated at 33.1 MAF which is 1.8 percent higher than Rabi-2013-14 but 9.1 percent less than normal availability of 36.4 MAF.