Venue: Conference Hall, CDPR

Date: 10th Nov 2017, Friday

Time: 3.30 pm to 5.00 pm

Consortium for Development Policy Research (CDPR) hosted its seventeenth Lahore Policy Exchange talk on “What CPEC means for agriculture.” Discussions of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is often focused on China’s energy and infrastructure investments in Pakistan. Missing from these conversations is the central role agriculture has to play in making CPEC a success. In 2015, China imported $160 billion in agricultural products, making it the world’s largest agricultural importer. CPEC opens a big opportunity for Pakistan to increase its currently tiny share in China’s growing food market. But are Pakistani businesses and government policies suited to exploit that opportunity? These aspects were discussed by our two speakers: Arif Nadeem, Former secretary Agriculture, Government of Punjab, gave a brief overview of the agriculture sector, and Hasaan Khawar, Fellow, Consortium for Development Policy Research and public policy expert, discussed free trade agreements between Pakistan and China and to what extent CPEC will facilitate trade in agriculture. Naved Hamid, Professor of Economics, Lahore School of Economics, moderated the discussion.