PAGE Blog Business Weekly Magazine
With the launching of Khairpur Special Economic Zone, Sindh has entered in to a new era of rural industrialisation, which would go a long way not only in strengthening the industrial base of the province but also in providing employment to the local population in their home town, this is also a giant leap in curbing the migration of rural population to the megalopolis, Karachi. Needless to emphasize that Karachi’s main problem has been the exodus of people from rural areas to the only industrial hub of the country, the problem brought the City Fathers hapless as it is practically impossible for them to provide civic amenities to a population, which has increasing at alarming level and the only solution left is to somehow stop this unmanageable growth of population.
In Pakistan, over 70 percent people live in rural areas and a majority of them facing acute problem of unemployment resulting in increase in suicide and crime rates. The miseries of this poor and hungry lot can only be sorted out by preparing a long-term policy for rural industrialisation. This policy should be aggressively perused even if we have to put an embargo on setting up industries in mega cities causing industrial pollution which is becoming hazardous with every passing day. In fact, we need at least one hundred small and medium size rural industrial zones in next five years. This is result will offer pollution-free environment to Karachi and other mega cities and moreover it will help maintain the massive influx of people to the cities.
The sole objective of rural industrialisation is improving the life of the rural lot by tapping vast natural and human resources existing in the villages. The process of rural industrialisation should have its own features such as low investment of capital, labor intensity and use of simple technology by employing local human and natural resources — a fine blend of local manpower with the indigenous resources. Such initiatives are absolutely necessary to bring about a change in the lives of deprived class of our society. The idea should be to start a meaningful economic development aimed at the lifting up of economic activities in rural areas by converting the peasants into an active participant of the productive society.
The scope of rural industrialisation should be utilised properly as there is rich national resources in the rural areas. For instance, it is appropriate to set up a date-processing and packaging plant at Khairpur. Khairpur is the city of dates, exporting different varieties of dates and getting high price for this value-added product in the international markets. An idea to develop a rural industrial base with the participation of rural entrepreneurs for the growth of industries is best suited in this specific area.
The process of rural industrialisation, however, is distinguished from the situation under which certain industries are transplanted in a specific rural area. Thanks to the recent realisation that small and micro enterprises have the potential to generate more productive employment opportunities in the national economy.
The most important aspect of rural industrialisation is to select the most beneficial industry in terms of resource requirement, comparative advantages, and creation of linking with other sectors within the country and region, and with the rest of the world so that the country gains from the globalisation process.
Considering the present level of development of the developing economies of the Asian and Pacific region resource-based industries, particularly food, fruit, vegetable and marine processing appear to be the best suited for achieving the main objective, that is, poverty alleviation. Although the cultivation and production of fruits and vegetable in the Asian and Pacific region is one of the fastest growing economic activities; the processing of those products is stall at their initial stage. In fact, a greater proportion of fruits and vegetable are consumed without formal processing – mostly consumed fresh. Nevertheless, this is one of emerging industry in the region. In 1998, the fruit and vegetable processing industry of Thailand accounted for 2.49 percent of the total manufacturing value added. While the contribution of this industry in other countries of the region remained less than half percent.
Citrus is a prized fruit of Pakistan and holds number one position among all fruits both in area and production in the country. Today, Pakistan stands among the top ten citrus growing countries in the world. Kinnow is grown primarily in the plains of Punjab province. It has good demand abroad, as foreign fruit vendors generally prefer Kinnow from Pakistan. Its production has increase overtime but unfortunately the exports remained stagnated due to unavailability of proper cold storage system and efficient export standard packaging. Therefore, there is a need to develop a dedicated state-of-the-art industrial zone in the Kinnow producing areas of the country to boost the export potential of this fruit.
In short it is high time for a developing country like Pakistan to go for rural industrialisation which is the only solution to combat poverty. On the other hand the massive concentration of developing industrial units in Karachi has resulted in severe pollution. Industrial pollution hurts the environment in a range of ways, and it has a negative impact on human lives and health. Pollutants can also kill animals and plants, imbalance ecosystems, degrade air quality radically, damage buildings, and generally degrade quality of life.
