CPEC turns into ‘Green Corridor’ under 2nd phase

BEIJING: China, Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is turning into a 'Green Corridor' which galvanized the mutual opportunities for developing agriculture sector, under its second phase.

According to a report published by Gwadar Pro, the second phase of CPEC, apart from other important focus on the areas of collaboration, agriculture has received primary and immediate attention from all sides.

China has recently appointed Agriculture Commissioner that has oversight of the cooperation between the two countries. Recently the second meeting of the Joint Working Group on Agriculture was hosted online to further deepen the filed cooperation. There were discussions primarily in setting priorities for the agricultural development.

Both Pakistan and China agreed to jointly implement the Memorandum of Understanding on further cooperation in dealing with disease and pest control including locust, plant diseases and insect and pest prevention.

There was also discussion on finalizing modalities to establish a sustainable plant pest control center in Pakistan. The decision and discussion during this join working meeting has reflected China’s emergency assistance especially where Pakistan is currently battling with the desert locust.

It was noted at the meeting that all the projects under the CPEC are moving on a fast track to be completed under the given timeline. With building of institutions and cooperation’s on exchange of technology sharing, Chinese government is supporting Pakistan in its drive to diversify the agriculture sector and improve the yield for better growth of economy.

CPEC is a combination of phase wise implementation of diverse range of projects including short, medium and long term with estimation of completion of each phase in 2017, 2025 and 2030. Agriculture sector is part of the second phase.

It was observed that as a result of the strong cooperation and effective implementation of Phase I, there is larger connectivity that has made the linkages from farms to the market hence providing ample assistance to farmers to reach to not only local but regional and international markets as well.

CPEC energy projects have also helped boost the level of contribution for agriculture which was under stress as a result of the lack of energy resources. CPEC is overall strengthening the entire agriculture system in Pakistan.

The plans that include in CPEC are to promote and introduce the water management techniques, improve the crop yielding, storage and transportation of agriculture products in pre- and post-harvest period apart from creating innovation for marketing and sales.

As a result of larger and closer cooperation between Pakistan and China under the CPEC framework, there have been several important steps taken in order to provide effective ways and transfer of technology along with learning experience between experts, farmers and connected agriculture value chain that is making head ways now in various directions.

The second phase of CPEC is focusing also on the agriculture sector in order to improve Pakistan’s agriculture-based exports which are currently lingering on only 18 percent of the entire export.

It is also important to note here that our agri-based exports to China are also at 8 percent. Pakistan is looking for capitalising on the building and evolving opportunities created by the CPEC and trying to add high value products that can be exported to China for consolidating and reaping the fruit, the report added.