Despite ecological diversity, suitable climate and vast fertile land, Pakistan is unfortunately among the lowest edible oil-producing countries. Having only 20 pc domestic production of the total requirement, the country spends approximately US$ 4 billion annually on the import of edible oil to meet the pressing demand of its around 220 million population.
Respective governments and policymakers could not fully benefit from over 4.4 million hectares fertile land suitable for the cultivation of olive, sunflower, soybean, corn, canola and other oils.
Pakistan’s annual requirement of edible oil is about five million tons (MT) with approximately 16kg per capita use and most of its chunk is imported from Malaysia and Indonesia.
In 2006 edible oil’s import bill was only US$ 615 million which jumped to US$ 3.8 billion in 2022 with the country presently producing around six MT. If edible oil prices increase by five percent annually, the country’s imports would further jump. In this situation, sunflower, olive, canola and other products would go beyond the common man’s reach,
It is welcoming that in recent years, the government realized this challenge and focused to fully utilize olive potential land in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Merged Areas, Balochistan, Punjab, Azad Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan through a substantial plantation of edible oil plants and declared several areas as ‘Olive Valleys.’
About 100,000 and 300,000 hectare land in Azad Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan is now being used for sunflower and canola cultivation respectively, according to the experts’ Thousands of olive grafting trees mostly of Italian variety planted under POTCCS could be seen on the mountains of Talash in Lower Dir, on way to Chitral.
Till 2019-20, only 3,087 acres of land in KP was used for the cultivation of edible oil-producing plants which increased to 7,271 and 12,213 acres in 2020-21 and 2021-22 respectively.
The experts believe that focusing on the cultivation of edible oil would help save a considerable amount of our foreign exchange.
