Islamabad: The agriculture sector has recorded a remarkable growth of 4.40% and surpassed the target of 3.5% as well as last year’s growth of 3.48% during FY 2022.
According to Economic Survey, the growth in agriculture sector recorded 4.40% and surpassed the target of 3.5%.
This growth is mainly driven by high yields, attractive output prices and supportive government policies, better availability of certified seeds, pesticides, and agriculture credit.
The crops sector outperformed and posted a growth of 6.58% during FY 2022 against 5.96% last year.
At the sub-sector level, important crops, other crops, and cotton ginning depicted a significant growth of 7.24%, 5.44%, and 9.19%, respectively, against last year’s growth of 5.83%, 8.27% , and -13.08%.
The growth in production of important crops namely cotton, rice, sugarcane, and maize are estimated at 17.9%, 10.7% , 9.4% , and 19.0% respectively.
The cotton crop increased from 7.1 million bales reported last year to 8.3 million bales during 2021-22; rice production increased from 8.4 million tonnes to 9.3 million tonnes; sugarcane production increased from 81.0 million tonnes to 88.7 million tonnes; maize production increased from 8.9 million tonnes to 10.6 million tonnes, while wheat production decreased from 27.5 million tonnes to 26.4 million tonnes.
Other crops, having a share of 13.86 percent in agriculture value addition and 3.14 percent in GDP, grew by 5.44 percent on the back of an increase in the production of pulses (29.82 percent), oil seeds (24.75 percent), vegetables (11.52 percent), fruits (1.53 percent) and fodders (0.36 percent).
Livestock, having a share of 61.89 percent in agriculture and 14.04 percent in GDP, recorded a growth of 3.26 percent in 2021-22 compared to 2.38 percent during the same period last year. The fishing sector, having a share of 1.39 percent in agriculture value addition and 0.32 percent in GDP, grew at 0.35 percent compared to a growth of 0.73% in the same period last year. The forestry sector, having a share of 2.14% in agriculture value addition and 0.49 percent in GDP, posted a positive growth of 6.13% against the negative growth of 0.45 percent last year.
The domestic production of fertilizers during FY 2022 (July-March) increased by 1.9% over the same period of last year. This increase in domestic production of fertilizer is mainly due to the running of two LNG-based plants.
