Livestock sector along with industry and trade which contributes around 12% to the domestic economy has also been badly affected due to the closing of markets and companies over the past 14 days due to the lock down imposed to control the spread of Coronavirus in a country.
Livestock production is an important component of agriculture. It is considered a sub-sector of Pakistan agriculture and contributes to about 56% of the value addition in agriculture. The Pakistani livestock sector includes a wide variety of animals includes buffalo, cattle, goats, sheep, poultry, camels, asses, horses and mules.
The drop in consumption of milk and meat has affected 110 million farmers, directly or indirectly associated with the production and delivery of livestock milk and meat. The sale of livestock in the markets has stopped due to the reduced sale and consumption of milk and meat due to lock down for coronavirus.
One of the former informed that thousands of litres of milk are wasted every day due to lock down for coronavirus. The livestock sector could not be provided any facilities such as tax exemption and other concessions that were provided by the government to the trade and commerce sector.
Farmers suffer losses due to the stoppage of the sale of milk. On the agenda of foreign companies, the elements associated with the dry milk business mobilized to gain benefit of current situation of Coronavirus. These elements reportedly wrote a letter to the prime minister Imran khan after Punjab Chief Minister Sardar Usman Buzdar did not allow free duty on import of dried milk from European countries.