ISLAMABAD: The government has set a target of about 2.363m tons of poultry during the fiscal year 2023-24 in order to fulfil the poultry meat requirements at the domestic level.
The poultry output during the 11 months of the ongoing fiscal year was logged at 2.160m metric tons. About 5.809 million tons of meat was also produced in order to fulfil the requirements of the commodity at a local level as well as for exporting to exploit the existing potential of halal meat in global markets.
An official in the Ministry of National Food Security and Research that the domestic output of meat in 11 months of last year was recorded at 5.5 million tons as the government had set to produce about 5.5 million tons of meat during the year 2022-23.
He said that beef production targets for the period under review were fixed at 2.630m metric tons and mutton at 817,000 tons. He added that during the outgoing fiscal year, the local production of beef was recorded at 2.55 million tons as against the set targets of 2.54 million tons, whereas about 799,000 metric tons of mutton were also produced as compared to the set targets of 799,000 metric tons.
He informed that the agriculture sector was envisaged to grow by 3.9 percent in the Annual Plan 2022-23 given the strong crop sector performance of the previous year.
However, he said that during the period from June-August 2022, torrential rains and flash flooding led to an unprecedented losses and agriculture sector suffered the greatest damage and loss of around $13 billion.
The agriculture sector is expected to grow by 3.5% in the next fiscal year with expected contributions of important crops at 3%, other crops at 3.5%, livestock at 3.6%, cotton ginning at 7.2%, fishing at 3% and forestry at 3%, he added. —APP
