The Pakistani government has failed to achieve the production target of rice fixed for 2006-07, it was recently announced by the Federal Committee for Agriculture (FCA) in a meeting. The production target of rice crop was fixed at 5.6 million tonnes but the actual production was 5.4 million MT. The production achieved is even less than the production of 5.5 million tonnes of 2005-2006. The target for the Punjab was fixed at 3.2 million tonnes against the actual production of 3 million MT showing a short fall of 5.6 percent.

The production of Basmati in Punjab was estimated to be 2.6 million MT and of the other verities like IRRI was expected to be 0.5 million MT but the production was 2.4 million MT of Basmati and 0.5 million MT of IRRI accounting for short fall of 6.8 percent.

The production target for Sindh was 1.80 million MT while the actual production was 1.76 million MT falling short by 2.5 percent. NWFP met the production target of 0.1 million MT. Balochistan's target was 0.50 million MT whereas its production was 0.47 million MT ie short by 5.6 percent. The committee observed that the short fall was mainly due to the late supply of water, pest attack and substitution of rice by sugarcane.

The committee also set rice production target for 2007-08 at 5.72 million MT from an area 2.59 million hectares. The production share of the provinces has been fixed at 3.2 million MT for Punjab; Sindh 1.7 million MT; NWFP 0.1 million MT and Balochistan 0.5 million MT.