Islamabad: A three-month ban has been on imposed on export of meat and live animals by the Ministry of Commerce, stated Pakistan’s Senior Minister of Commerce, Makhdoom Amin Fahim.
He has taken a serious notice of the price hike in meat and live animals. He stated that there are several other factors contributing to it, which include death of 1.5 million animals due to devastating flood of 2010 and animal smuggling to various neighboring countries. He expressed his serious concerns over a huge increase in price of mutton from Rs. 271/- to Rs. 406/kg and beef from Rs. 154/kg to Rs. 241/kg from 2008-09 and 2010-11, respectively.
Therefore, keeping in view the Holy month of Ramadan and Eid-ul-Azha not being far away, Honorable Minister took this bold step and has imposed a ban for three months. He further stated that this would help in bridging the demand-supply gap and bring meat and animal prices down so that poor people can also consume them. He also stressed on controlling the smuggling of meat and animals as well.
He further stated that a number of mega projects have also been initiated in the country to increase the production of livestock under the Strategy of Public-Private Partnership, National Economic Growth, Poverty Alleviation, Food Security, Improve Livestock Service Delivery, Expand opportunities for Farmer Livelihood, and Enhance Foreign Exchange Earnings.
Historically, Ministry of Commerce has always been in favor of exporting value added products like meat, meat products and finished leather goods as the export of live animals effects local meat and leather industry badly. Therefore, he stated that the Government is in the process of establishing Halal Food Certification System in Pakistan, which will allow it earn $600 billion in foreign exchange. It is to be noted that total number of 95,523 live animals have been exported during 2010-11 (July-March) period.
