Pakistan: USAID to Finance Gov’t for Livestock Uplift

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

KARACHI – The Sindh government has planned to set up Sindh Dairy and Meat Development Company and to initiate master plan study on livestock meat and dairy development under JICA grant during current fiscal year.

This was informed at Provincial Development Working Party meeting held under the chairmanship of Additional Chief Secretary Development Munawar Opal at his office the other day.

Secretary Livestock Laiq Ahmed Memon informed the meeting that USAID has showed keen interest in collaborating with the Sindh government for extending support to dairy and meat sector in Sindh, while a scheme for raising productivity and income of the farmers at the cost of Rs500 million will be started very soon.
He said that USAID was launching the Empower Pakistan Livestock Development Project (EPLDP) with $75 million investment under empower Pakistan agriculture programme (EPAG) which aimed to gear up a broad based effort to promote economic growth in order to alleviate poverty in rural areas of Pakistan.

The project will work at villages, districts, provincial and national level, aiming to provide milk produce and dairy entrepreneurs with training, technical assistance and assess to credit, inputs and services especially to women, he said. “Women will be assisted to engage in a small business enterprise that will meet the growing demand for dairy related services and products,” he added. Furthermore, an illustrative enterprise will include women owned milk collection and chilling centres to improve mild quality and increase access to market for raw milk. The Secretary Livestock also informed about the project for the master plan study on livestock, meat, dairy development in Sindh province with foreign funding of JICA to achieve a balanced development and poverty reduction through promotion of livestock, meat and dairy

Source: The Nation (link opens in a new window)