Strategic Reforms for Agricultural Growth in Pakistan

Couverture
Rashid Faruqee
World Bank Publications, 1999 - 153 pages
"Future prospects for the agricultural sector in Pakistan depend on its ability to increase output and income of producers." Agriculture remains the backbone of the Pakistani economy, employing more than half the labor force and accounting for 70 per cent of export revenues. However, agriculture faces two sets of constraints in Pakistan: resource constraints and policy distortions. This volume deals with the major resource and policy constraints currently facing Pakistani agriculture. Government involvement in Pakistan's agricultural sector has been excessive and often inappropriate, and agricultural reforms are a key part of the adjustment program underway in Pakistan. Some of the principal goals of the program are to ensure a sound and sustainable macroeconomic framework with sustainable internal and external balances, to liberalize trade, privatize government-owned enterprises, deregulate and eliminate public sector monopolies, and to reform the financial sector. The agricultural sector can contribute to the Pakistani economy and to the adjustment program. Agriculture has the potential to make a larger contribution to total revenue and plays an important role in external balances. A favorable climate gives Pakistan a strong comparative advantage in horticulture, as indicated by the rapid growth of the subsector in the absence of policy interventions.
 

Expressions et termes fréquents

Fréquemment cités

Page 29 - The indirect effects measured include both the effect of trade and macroeconomic policies on the real exchange rate and the extent of protection afforded to nonagricultural commodities.
Page 118 - International finance organizations" as mentioned in Article 1 1 of the Tax Law refer to the International Monetary Fund, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank), the International Development Association, the International Fund for Agricultural Development and other finance organizations of the UN The "preferential interest rate...
Page 114 - Pakistan panel survey Round 13, 1990. Cited in von Braun, Malik, and Zeller 1993. Note: Figures in parentheses are percentage shares of credit used for each category out of total credit. Table 8 — Proportion of expenditures met through credit, by asset quintiles and use of credit, Madagascar, 1992 Sources: IFPRI/CNRFVDSA Survey, 1992.
Page 59 - ... as a percentage of gross national product (GNP) or gross domestic product (GDP).
Page 29 - ... the degree of nominal direct, indirect, and total intervention in representative export crops for the 18 countries. The numbers on direct intervention provide an estimate of the percentage by which domestic producer prices diverged from those that would have prevailed in a well-functioning market at free trade (given the actual exchange rate and degree of industrial protection). The measure is equivalent to the rate of nominal protection.6 Although government policies differ significantly among...
Page 15 - ... response would be different if price controls were removed entirely. Macroeconomic uncertainty also dampens the response to price reforms because it creates instability in relative incentives in the economy. When inflation is high and the real exchange rate is substantially overvalued, the rate of indirect taxation is high and highly variable. Removing direct price interventions may not lead to a large supply response under these conditions because of the general uncertainty and because the impact...
Page 6 - The gross enrolment ratio is the number enrolled in a level of education, whether or not they belong in the relevant age group for that level, expressed as a percentage of the population in the relevant age group for that level.
Page 5 - ... environments without alleviating poverty, founding self-sustaining economic growth, creating security and happiness, or providing for the general welfare of the majority of the inhabitants. In fact, poverty in Latin America and Africa has grown as the population grows. In Latin America, after two decades of reducing the percentage of the population living below the poverty line, the trend was sharply reversed during the 1980s. The benefits were not so demonstrable in Africa, where economic growth...
Page 32 - Both the public and the private sectors have important roles to play in Pakistan's agricultural sector.
Page 15 - ... increased once and for all in an inflationary environment, producers would expect the nominal price increase to erode in real terms — and they would have little incentive to increase output. Their response would be different if price controls were removed entirely. Macroeconomic uncertainty also dampens the response to price reforms because it creates instability in relative incentives in the economy. When inflation is high and the real exchange rate is substantially overvalued, the rate of...

Informations bibliographiques