Pakistan is a major producer of the world’s best and most popular mangoes, ranking the 4th largest in the world with an annual output of around 1.8 million tons. The sweet and juicy mangoes have earned a reputation in European and Gulf countries and serve as a main pillar of Pakistan’s fruit exports.
Mango is widely cultivated in Punjab and Sindh provinces. However, with a huge amount of production and multiple exporting destinations, Pakistani mango’s share in the global export market is only 7.6 percent, according to an official from the Ministry of Commerce. “Pakistan exports less than 6 percent of its total production to 57 countries, including Britain, the United States, China, Japan, United Arab Emirates, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Iran,” said the official, believing that the production and exports are not up to the mark.
The official said Pakistan’s export potential is much more than the current volume but the country is unable to increase it due to poor processing, old cultivation and harvesting methods, lack of required facilities to meet international protocols, low per-hectare yield and higher cost.
Zargham Khan Khakwani, a mango farmer with over 100-acre orchard, told Xinhua that he hopes China can assist local farmers apply modern cultivation technologies to increase mango’s competitiveness in the global market. “Power projects under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) have cut electricity load shedding by 70 percent in the rural areas, which is helping us use tube wells for orchard irrigation. Water is life for fruit trees. In the past, a number of mango trees would wither due to shortage of water, but now, the availability of ample power from CPEC projects is helping us provide required water to the trees, which has increased their life and also boosted production,” he said.
Khakwani, whose farmhouse is famous for producing top varieties of mango, including Chaunsa, Langra, Red King, Fajri, Dussehri and Anwar Ratol, has plans to export his tasty and pulpy summer fruit to other countries, including China.
Muhammad Ashraf, another mango farmer whose business has a big push from the improved road infrastructure under CPEC.
Ashraf owns an 80-acre mango orchard in Punjab’s Vehari district, which is famous for its different varieties of sweet-smelling delicious juicy mangoes. In the past, Ashraf had to sell the majority of his production at local markets or in neighbouring cities at cheap rates owing to the absence of a proper road network leading to big cities. Now the new road infrastructure is helping him sell his mangoes on good prices to big cities like Lahore and Islamabad.
Ashraf told Xinhua that CPEC’s top-class road infrastructure has shortened distances and cut traveling time by half, which has revolutionised the local transport system and facilitated his mango supply to other areas. “CPEC has brought big changes in Pakistan by spreading a vast road network linking south with the north. In the past, it took us a long time to reach big cities and sometimes trucks got turned turtle due to poor roads, but now transportation has become very easy,” he said.
By reaching big markets, the mango growers’ income has also increased by 50 to 70 percent. They sell a basket with up to eight kilogram mangoes for 550 rupees at the local market but now they can sell the same basket in big cities for 900 rupees.
Ashraf, who is already in cooperation with a Chinese company for hybrid seeds of watermelon and different vegetables, said Pakistani mango producers need latest agricultural technology to increase mango production, improve quality and supply to the international market.
Chief of All Pakistan Fruit and Vegetable Exporters, Importers and Merchants Association Waheed Ahmed told Xinhua that Pakistan has set a target of 100,000 tons of mango export this year to earn a foreign exchange of 80 million US dollars.