Agriculture sector grew by 3.81 percent in 2017-18: Economic Survey

ISLAMABAD, Apr 26 (APP):Agriculture sector recorded a remarkable growth during the financial year 20117-18 and grew by 3.81 percent and surpassed its targeted growth of 3.5 percent.
Agriculture sector had witnessed 2.07 percent growth during last year’ according to the Economic Survey of Pakistan 2017-18 launched here on Thursday.
This stemmed from higher yields, attractive output prices and supportive government policies,
better availability of certified seeds, pesticides, agriculture credit and intensive fertilizers off-take.
The crops sector performed well and witnessed a growth rate of 3.83 percent against
the last year’s growth of 0.91 percent.
The growth in sub sectors, important crops, other crops and cotton ginning registered a significant growth of 3.57 percent, 3.33 percent and 8.72 percent, respectively.
All major crops including cotton production recorded 11.8 percent growth and it was recorded at 11.396 million bales against the production of 10.671 million bales.
Sugarcane production grew by 7.4 percent and 81.102 million tons of record production were achieved during the season, which was stood at 75.84 million tons in same period last year.
Rice production grew by 8.7 percent and it was recorded at 7.44 million tons as compared to the production of 6.9 million tons of last year, where as areas under crop grew by 6.4 percent.
During 2017-18, wheat crop out put decreased by 4.4 percent and it was recorded at 26.492
million tons as against the last year’s production of 26.6 million tons.