ISLAMABAD (Commodity Online) : Pakistan has revised major crops estimates and reduced wheat estimates to 22.3 million tonnes instead of 25 million tonnes due to extended drought in major areas.

According to Pakistan’s finance ministry, the latest crops estimates includes cotton (12.7 million bales against the initial target of 12.10 million bales), rice (6.7 million tonnes against the initial target of 6.37 million tonnes), sugarcane (47 million tonnes against 56 million tonnes), and maize (3.2 million tonnes against 3.4 million tonnes).

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The six major crops for which targets have been reset have considerable contribution 7.10 percent in determining the size of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to the Ministry for Finance figures.

Analysts said the droughty situation would result about 2 million tonnes wheat production shortfall for the current season but it would have been worse than it had the government not taken necessary steps to counter it.

There was no rain across the country in November and December 2009, which resulted into lover production of wheat in the current season. Achieving the national wheat target mainly depends upon the crops produced from rain-fed areas.

Pakistan however claimed it would be able to achieve wheat production as required by the country.

According to country’s Food ministry, only 10 percent wheat sowing fields were in barani areas, which gave 2 million tonnes wheat production and due to lack of rain wheat could not have been sown.

The ministry said the government would cover deficiency of 2 million tonnes of wheat production in barani areas through increase in per acre production.

The government had a surplus of about 2.5 million tones wheat. Conservative estimates suggest that the federal government has at least 1.5 million tones strategic reserves with liberal releases to the millers, it said.
The wheat sowing data revealed that Punjab had sown wheat over 6.841 million hectare achieving 100 per cent target, Sindh over 1 million hectare against the target of 1.031 million hectare, NWFP over 0.665 million hectare and Balochistan over 0.290 million hectare.

Keeping in view the track record of the wheat production in the country, it suggests that the country achieved a record production when the drought-like situations was being feared.

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