Unsteady pulse
February 9, 2021
Pakistan faces an elevated need to import key food items including edible oil, wheat, sugar, tea and pulses, with lower-than-expected levels of output.
Production of the highly valued cotton crop has dipped to a level of 30-year low. Productivity of the five staple crops has slipped to less than half of the world’s best. Recent supply shocks have increased food prices by an average of 31 percent in the past 29 months. This is dramatic enough for an economy with an agrarian base.
The fact that 36.9 percent of the country’s households are food insecure paints an even more straining picture – a finding of the National Nutritional Survey 2018 conducted by Pakistan’s Ministry of Health and Unicef. Things don’t get any better, with children under five years suffering high levels of severe stunting at 40 percent and almost 30 percent of them underweight.