A high-level Saudi delegation led by Minister of Environment, Water and Agriculture Abdulrahman Al-Fadley visited Islamabad late last month and the two sides agreed to work toward $3 billion in Pakistani agricultural and food exports to the Kingdom within two years. It is an ambitious number. Rice and red meat, the two items that dominate the trade, were worth roughly $330 million last year: about 169,000 tons of rice valued at $163 million, and some 30,000 tons of red meat at $167 million. Closing that gap in 24 months is an uphill task. But the joint communiqué also listed processed foods, fruit concentrates and green fodder as priority items, and that wider range of products improves the odds.

The Special Investment Facilitation Council was set up in 2023 to attract investment from friendly countries, among them China, Turkiye and the GCC states, in sectors including agriculture, mining and information technology. The idea was to bring the federal government, the defense establishment and the provinces into a single coordinated arrangement to facilitate those investments. The SIFC has done well in IT. In corporate agriculture it has done less well, largely because of unresolved inter-provincial water disputes. The scope in quasi-agricultural fields, however, remains vast.

Export earnings help economic development, but only if they are........

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