Daily Times

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Pakistan (ICAP) has proposed measures to earn huge foreign exchange reserves worth billions of Dollars by exporting the value-added dairy products and halal meat.

“Pakistan has livestock in abundance, and this sector can help the country earning billions of USD by exporting quality meat and the value-added dairy products”, according to a research document titled “Model Federal Budget 2022-23 published by the ICAP.

In 2020-21, milk production in the country was 63m ton and grew by only 3.23pc over the previous year’s production. Despite that, around 20pc of this milk production had been wasted (15pc due to faulty transportation and lack of chilling facilities and 5pc in suckling calf nourishment) which is a loss of 12.74m tons per anum.

Moreover, due to recent cow-bound disease, the industry has been affected substantially. In an effort to transform this sector and capitalize on the production, new plants can be imported for better production, storage and less wastage. Addition to that, quality breed’s semen can also be imported from the Netherlands and US, and distribute free of cost to the local farmers for three years to improve milk production.

Furthermore, research and development should be done to convert liquid milk to a high vitamin powder form milk, which can also bring in huge revenue the national economy. Likewise, research and development unit can also be beneficial to monitor, assess as well as to prevent any such outbreak amongst animals.

With respect to the halal meat, the document suggested that new avenues should be adopted for halal certification to capture meat from across the country. “Further, we have to control livestock smuggling to Afghanistan and other international markets so that the benefits remain within the country and are not lost due to the operational glitches. Threat also remains of the potential disease spread amongst the herd, for which timely measures at both federal and local level must be undertaken. Investment in higher education and funding for further research in veterinary sciences can be long-term approaches which government must consider.