Rise in cultivation area under cereal crops, which command almost half of the total crops, is expected to go up by 2,000 hectares to 3.41 million hectares during the new fiscal as compared to the last year, the report unveiled on Sunday states.
Production of major cereal crops -- paddy, wheat, maize, finger millet and barley -- had gone up by 10.1 percent or 0.74 million tons to 8.69 million tons during 2007/08 as compared to a year earlier.
The survey also stated that early monsoon and rise in land under paddy and maize contributed to the rise in overall cereal production despite a fall in the production of wheat and barley.
Similarly, the production area under oil seeds also has been estimated to edge up to 181,000 hectares. Weightage of cereal crops and cash crops in overall agriculture production is expected to go marginally down to 49.6 percent and 28.1 percent during 2008/09 from 49.8 percent and 28.1 percent, respectively, last year. Production of milk during the year is expected to rise by four percent to 1.45 million tons from the production last year.
Production of meat in the country is expected to go up by 3.3 percent to 241,059 tons despite a ban on import of parent chicks from India as well as the outbreak of bird flu a few months ago. “Production of overall meat products is expected to rise with an increased production of he-buffaloes, goats and sheep though the production of chicken and ducks remained stagnant,” the survey said.
Due to bird flu outbreak, which plagued the whole poultry, total production of eggs is expected fall by 0.2 percent to 629.9 million pieces from last year´s production.
In line with the three-year interim plan that envisages reducing poverty to 24 percent from 31 percent, Rs 2.13 billion grant assistance will be provided to 4,048 community projects through Poverty Reduction Fund during the year 2008/09. Agreements have been signed to provide Rs 685.7 million to 1,816 projects during the first eight months of the current fiscal year.
The 10th five year plan has targeted to increase employment to 11.01 million, bringing down the percentage of completely unemployed population to 4.1 percent and partially unemployed population to 22.3 percent by the end of the plan. However, the information about the progress of the plan has not been ascertained so far.
With the shrinking employment opportunities in the country, number of overseas Nepali workers reached 186,783 by mid-April 2008/09. Total number of foreign job seekers was 229,373 during the year 2007/08.
prabhakar@myrepublica.com
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