Pakistan to boost oil seeds production
Pakistan is expected to launch National Oilseed Development Projects to enhance edible oil production to meet 50 percent of domestic requirements.
Agriculture and Livestock (Minfal). The projects will be completed within five
years and will enable the country to produce 50 percent of domestic consumption
of edible oil, a top official said.
He said that the main objective of
these projects are to encourage growers to cultivate oilseed in the country to
save huge amount of foreign exchange expenditure on edible oil import.
At present domestic production is sufficient to only meet 28 percent of
the demand while the rest has to be imported. Pakistan annually spends about
$1.3 billion on import of edible oil to meet the demand for the commodity.
The effort is now to decrease the import bill on account of edible oil.
The official said that total area under sunflower cultivation during 2007-08 was
about 11,24,000 hectares, while canola seed was cultivated over 4,01000 hectares
of land.
