BEIJING, Oct. 16 (INP): China, as the world’s major fruit importer and producer, is encouraging Pakistan to export high-quality fresh fruit in the Chinese market, said Mohammad Yasin, CEO of Midtrans.

Mohammad Yasin has been living in China for more than 30 years. He told China Economic Net that Pakistan’s enterprises can improve the quality of fruits by providing the basic knowledge to our farmers on how to protect and handle fruits.

“The Fruits account 30% to 40% of the total is lost from the field to the market, because of the mishandling, we have to treat each fruit, like an egg. When you mishandling the egg, it will be broken and waste”, he mentioned.

He said that after five years, China will be a net importer of food, because they will be a net exporter of industrial products. Therefore, we should focus on our agriculture that is the backbone of the Pakistan economy. As the major beneficiary of Belt and Road Initiatives, Pakistan can get the advantage of the Chinese market by producing those crops which are popular here.

“Pakistani enterprises have to focus on how we can market our fruits, and we have to find overseas markets, which can pay well to our farmers. There are two ways, by using modern practices we have to increase shelf life of the fruits and the government should provide subsidies in the form of the transportation of the foods to the international markets in this way cost of the product can be a little cheaper and we can compete in the international market,” he stated.

Yasin believes that we should introduce new crops instead of waste our energies on those crops, which are not giving any benefit to the farmers, and those traditional crops we can import at a very cheap price.

“We can increase the shelf life and quality of the fruits by using Chinese techniques because we don't have any shortage of manpower, just request Chinese to train our farmers,” he stated.

He said that our post-harvest management is very poor. There were certain programs by the foreign governments give such training but we didn't continue in particular. If we want to access the Chinese market, we have to consistently practice post-harvest handling so that we can save our food.

“Today in modern agriculture or Chinese agriculture, adopting the canopy of the tree, including a forest canopy, canopy plant, canopy arthropod and canopy microbial is the smart way instead of a higher tree that consume massive water,” he told CEN.

The Schematic planning and policies of economic reforms by the central government of China are implemented on the local level, the developing countries must follow that model. We have to go ahead with patience and we should concentrate on small projects rather than big projects, involving your youth in it.

“The big industrial and marketing companies should come to promote Pakistani fruits in the overseas market sector. They should invest, to make good laboratories, cold storage facilities, according to international requirements.

I think the Chinese government also should help Pakistan to facilitate, promote, and by providing training to our local enterprises” he added.

INP/javed