Agri economy.

Byline: Saad Khosa - Sohbatpur

Agriculture plays a hugely significant role in our economy. It is the first largest sector in terms of employment, absorbing 45 per cent of the country's total labour force, and second largest in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) accounting for 21pc of GDP.

Nearly 62pc of the country's population lives in rural areas most of whom directly or indirectly are dependent upon agriculture for their economy and livelihood.

The agriculture sector also provides support to other sectors of the economy as it is a primary supplier of raw material to industries as well as consumers of industrial products such as fertilisers, tractors and other agriculture machinery.

Despite its critical importance to economy and to the food security, the agriculture sector is beset with many problems and, therefore, has been showing a decline for the last three decades.

The timely availability of water for agriculture has been a major problem over the last several years. Many farm lands do not have access to the timely availability of water and, as a result, suffer massive production losses.

Building an efficient irrigation system to ensure the timely availability of water has now become one of Pakistan's top priorities.

Similarly, the unavailability of quality input at controlled prices is another significant problem for the agriculture sector of Pakistan. Fertiliser is a critical farm input.

However, the prices of essential fertilisers, especially urea and diammonia phosphate, are exorbitantly high. A bag of urea is being sold for Rs2,000, while a bag of diammonia phosphate costs Rs3,800. The general sales tax...

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