Pakistan: Research on for new vegetable oil resources

Despite the fact that Pakistan has an agrarian economy it is unable to produce sufficient quantity of edible oil to meet its domestic requirements.

The use of vegetable oil as a substitute for diesel fuel has already driven up the prices of palm and canola at international market, which is evident from recent price surge of $100 per tonne of palm oil in a short span of time. It would not be an exaggeration to say that non-food use of crops and increased use of bio-fuels may further augment the starvation of the deprived people in the world.
“The competition between supermarket and corner filling stations is increasing in the world particularly in western countries, and farms can not feed people and their vehicles at a time which ultimately make more to go hungry,” Professor Ishaq Head of Economics Department at local university said.

He said that government should evolve alternate means to meet domestic needs of edible oil otherwise coming year could bring harsh consequences because annual import of edible oil is increasing by 7 percent due to population growth and improving economic conditions.

Country’s 70 percent edible oil requirements are met through import of which 90 percent consists of palm oil. According to estimates the total size of edible oil and ghee industry in Pakistan is around Rs90 billion which could be catered by increasing and producing alternative sources including sunflower, olive, rapeseed, cottonseed and other oilseed crops with an effective medium and long term planning.

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