Economy
 
Government likely to ban export of meat, live animals
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August 05, 2011
Ministry of Commerce (MoC) last week proposed a complete ban on the export of meat and live animals to bring down the skyrocketing prices of beef and mutton in the country. Sources said that the ban has been proposed keeping in view the huge increase in price of mutton from Rs 271 to Rs 406 per kg and beef from Rs 154 per kg to Rs 241 per kg from 2008-09 and 2010-11, respectively. This ban would also help ensure availability of live animals for sacrificial purposes at Eid-Ul-Azha. “A ban will be imposed on export of meat and live animals in the next cabinet meeting by the Ministry of Commerce,” said sources. They said that there were several other factors contributing to it, which include death of 1.5 million animals due to devastating floods of 2010 and increasing animal smuggling to neighboring countries.
The government is likely to ban export of meat and live animals in the next cabinet meeting considering the proposal of ministry of commerce that was made keeping in view the need of local market and taking notice of unabatedly increasing meat prices.

Ministry of Commerce (MoC) last week proposed a complete ban on the export of meat and live animals to bring down the skyrocketing prices of beef and mutton in the country.

Sources said that the ban has been proposed keeping in view the huge increase in price of mutton from Rs 271 to Rs 406 per kg and beef from Rs 154 per kg to Rs 241 per kg from 2008-09 and 2010-11, respectively. This ban would also help ensure availability of live animals for sacrificial purposes at Eid-Ul-Azha.

“A ban will be imposed on export of meat and live animals in the next cabinet meeting by the Ministry of Commerce,” said sources. They said that there were several other factors contributing to it, which include death of 1.5 million animals due to devastating floods of 2010 and increasing animal smuggling to neighboring countries.

Therefore, keeping in view the Ramazan and Eid-ul-Azha not being far away, the ministery is likely to take this bold step to impose a ban for atleast three months. They further said that this would help in bridging the demand-supply gap and bring meat and animal prices down so that poor people could also consume them.

Last week, Makhdoom Amin Faheem, senior minister for commerce said that a number of mega projects had been initiated in the country to increase 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.

He said that the ministry of commerce has always been in favour 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.

He said the government was in the process of establishing Halal Food Certification System in Pakistan, which would allow it to earn $600 million 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.

However, the stakeholders of the leather sector were of the view that the government should ban export of meat and live animals permanently, as the country is facing severe shortage of leather raw material fresh meat, causing a price hike in local market.

Aziz Ahmed, Chairman Pakistan Tanners Association (PTA) demanded of the government to ban livestock export for an indefinite period in order to save leather sector in Pakistan and stabilize meat prices.

While welcoming the decision by ministry of commerce to ban exports of livestock until EidulAzha, said that banning livestock exports for about three months is appreciable but it’s not enough to stabilise the prices of mutton and beef which have already crossed all barriers.

He pointed out that meat prices have soared to double in just one year’s time and if the uncontrollable exports and smuggling would be continued, the day is not too far when consumers would be facing the prices of mutton skyrocketing at Rs 1,000 per kg.

He said that due to unabated export and smuggling of livestock from Pakistan to Iran, UAE, Afghanistan, etc. has created acute shortage of raw material for not only leather industry but woolen industry, milk and dairy industry, footwear industry and other allied industries are being deprived off raw material.

“The exports of leather and leather goods have declined to over 30 percent during current fiscal year and the declining trend is continuing and seems that country may be not able to cross $1 billion exports of leather during next fiscal”, Aziz warned.

The vast scale smuggling as well as export of live animals is hitting hard the tanner industry of the country by declining 30 percent of the leather goods export since 2007 and the live animals were primarily being smuggled to Iran and Afghanistan, as well as to Dubai under the garb of live animals export, allowed by the government.

He said that as many as 200,000 live animals were being smuggled per month, which was ulti-mately making it very difficult for the leather industry to meet the leather goods’ export orders. However, the legal export just ranges between 15,000-20,000animals per month. The smuggling, that has also caused abnormal raise in the meat/beef prices.

He said the leather goods export had been declined from $1.22 billion in fiscal year 2007-08 to $867 million in 2009-10. Some 63 percent decrease had been recorded in annual animal hides collection on the eve of EidulAzha during last five years, as only 6 million hides had been collected in 2010 as against 16 million hides in 2006, he maintained.

He pointed out that regular supply of hides/skins from routine slaughtering showed a steep decline of 66 percent during last five years.

The declining trend in the leather industry had also deprived 200,000 individuals of their jobs during the year as many tanneries have closed down or reduced their production to about 50 per cent, he added.

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