RICE SECTOR NEEDS TO BE DECLARED AS INDUSTRY
Dec 17, 2025 |
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ENTREPRENEURS BULLETIN – UNISAME
The Union of Small and Medium Enterprises (UNISAME) has urged Haroon Akhtar special assistant to prime minister (SAPM) Shehbaz Sharif to declare rice sector as industry on the basis of its being the second largest exporter, one of the major domestic consumption food item,
having a very big supply chain from farm to markets both domestic and global.
Zulfikar Thaver has requested Zeeshan Ahmed deputy general manager the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (SMEDA) to coordinate with Javed Jillani senior vice chairman Rice Exporters Association of Pakistan (REAP) and guide them to submit a formal, official request for declaring the rice sector as industry.
Thaver elaborated that declaration of the rice sector as industry will give recognition and impetus to rice cultivation, harvesting, storing, milling, processing, packing, exporting and meeting domestic requirements. Rice is becoming a staple food and biryani a fast food.
It deserves the status of an industry as it engulfs the whole supply chain from seeds to paddy and its milling and processing.
Once it is declared as industry it will get the priority it deserves for research and development (R&D) for more productive seeds and farm inputs.
It will also win the favour for modernization of farms and handsome harvest yields.
Many insecticides, pesticides and fumigation units are looking forward to set up import substitution units in Pakistan as soon as the rice segment is declared as an industry.
The SME Farmers and Agri Businesses Association have also urged the government to declare the rice sector as an industry to promote and encourage cultivation of rice and modernize the whole supply chain and its by products
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