Saturday, May 17, 2008
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is committed to achieving the Millennium Development Goal of halving hunger and poverty by 2015 with a focus on achieving sustainable food security through increasing productivity, encouraging entrepreneurial agriculture and introducing income diversification interventions at the farm level.
Secretary Ministry of Food Agriculture and Livestock (MINFAL) Ziaur Rahman said while addressing as chief guest at the official launch of the World Development Report 2008, at a local hotel on Friday.
Yusupha Crookes, World Bank Director, Pakistan, Sector Manager of the World Bank Adolfo Brizzi, Izhar Ali Hunzai of the Aga Khan Rural Supports Programme also spoke. The secretary MINFAL, appreciating the World Development Report 2008, said.
“Pakistan welcomes the World Bank Report and its focus on agriculture.”
He added that Pakistan also supports the conclusions of the report and encourages the World Bank to promote these findings with all the stakeholders in other developing and developed countries. Rehman further said that the World Bank report has made a detailed analysis of the agriculture sector and focuses on policy reforms which would help deal with the emerging challenges in the field of agriculture.
The Report on Agriculture, he said, has come belatedly after 25 years and in the meanwhile the agriculture sector has undergone metamorphic changes and diversification.
The fact that the World Bank has decided to publish this report through belatedly is an acknowledgement that agriculture is poised to play a dominant role in the world economy, he remarked.
He said the report has come at a juncture when food security of a large number of nations across the globe is at stake because of recurrent food shortages and price hike.
He added that the unprecedented increase in energy and DAP fertiliser prices are impacting the sustainability of agricultural production. The Secretary MINFAL said that a vast, varied and rapidly changing, agriculture sector offers new opportunities to hundreds of millions of rural poor to move out of poverty by engaging them in small holders farming, animal husbandry and employing in high value agriculture and non-farm economy.
Ismailimail 