Miller Magazine Issue: 142 October 2021

92 Country Profile MILLER / OCTOber 2021 With an overall GDP of close to $305 billion, Pa- kistan is the seventh-largest market in the Middle East, African, and South Asian regions, as mea- sured in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). It has the second-largest economy in South Asia, after In- dia. The economy has been growing slowly over the past two decades. However, the containment measures adopted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic led to a severe contraction in econom- ic activity. As a result, GDP growth is estimated to have contracted by 1.5 percent in 2020. Pakistan’s economy is forecast to grow by 1.3 percent in 2021. The agricultural sector is one of the largest con- tributors to the economy. While declining as a pro- portion of GDP, agriculture still contributes one-fifth of Pakistan's wealth and almost half the population depends directly or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihoods. With 79.6 million acres of arable land, there is a great potential for improving effi- ciencies and productivity of the agriculture sector. The crop sector is an important sector of the economy which provides food to the rapidly grow- ing population of the country. The major crops consist of six main crops: wheat, rice, sugarcane, maize, chickpea and cotton. Wheat is Pakistan’s largest crop, in terms of area sown and is grown under different agro-ecologi- cal zones. It is main dietary staple. Wheat flour currently contributes 72 percent of Pakistan’s daily caloric intake with per capita wheat consumption of around 124 kilograms (kg) per year, one of the highest in the world. In irrigated areas, wheat is planted after cotton, rice, and sugarcane, while in rainfed areas wheat is grown at the same time as maize and millet. The sowing of wheat takes place from October to De- cember and harvests from March to May. Approxi- mately 80 percent of farmers grow it on an area of around 9 million hectares (close to 40 percent of the country’s total cultivated land) during the win- ter. Pakistan’s population growth rate is among the fastest in the world and domestic wheat produc- tion and yields have not increased correspond- ingly, due to the impact of climate change, lack of investment in research for developing high-yield- ing varieties, and minimal increases in the support price over the last three years. To address these challenges and increase wheat production, at the end of October 2020, the government announced