The Walled City Exodus

Cramped real estate is lying wasted in the Walled City of Lahore that no one wants to take. Why is this so?

By Bakht Noor

The drawing room is lavish if not tasteful. “Be careful walking through here, it’s a little slippery,” says our host pointing towards the glistening black and silver tiles beneath our feet. “They told us it’s Italian marble, it’s the best in the world, but honestly I’ve never quite felt safe walking on it.” Middle-aged, genial, and fussy Mrs Shah* leads us to a drawing room the size of which elicits a cartoonish double-take.

What it lacks in taste it makes up for in lavishness.

{The name of the interviewee has been changed on request to maintain anonymity.}

In the background, the slight buzz of the central air-conditioning confirms why the room is so crisply cool in April. “Sorry about the noise, the air conditioning has been bothering us this year. Of course, back in the old house we never really needed air-conditioning. I still remember spending summers there as a kid and all us cousins would put our charpais in the courtyard and sleep all day. That’s what you’re here to talk about, right? The Mochi Gate house?”

That is indeed. A few years ago, Mrs Shah was the last hold out on selling a 1-kanal property in the middle of Lahore’s Walled City deep inside the Mochi Gate. For context, a kanal inside the walled city is a massive place — a grand old haveli really. “Property prices here are nothing like you would expect. Most people think they cost less here as compared to places like DHA or Bahria Town. However, I have seen one marla house sell here for Rs 50 lakh recently,” says one property dealer that works in the Walled City. “The problem is that there aren’t a lot of buyers and the rates are very high. A lot of families have moved out of here but it will take years before all the shareholders in a single property agree to sell it and more years before the place actually sells.”

The Walled City of Lahore is in a strange world of its own when it comes to the real estate market. Prices are high but demand is very low. Despite this, the past few decades have seen almost a complete exodus of wealthy families that used to live and conduct their business in the Walled City. And it isn’t just this area. Once considered central locations, places like Ichra, Mall Road, Krishannagar and even areas such as Shah Jamal and Shadman have become undesirable, with wealthier families regularly selling their old family homes here and shifting to places like Defence and Bahria Town and less wealthy ones moving to places like

Johar Town.

Sitting alone in the center of her drawing room, Mrs Shah looks withdrawn. She has not lived in the old family house at Mochi Gate for over 40 years now, but until a few years ago it was still in the family. That was until her father passed away. A wealthy man, he left behind a bustling business with over 2000 employees that is a household name in Pakistan. “All my siblings wanted to sell the house. No one was living there anymore in any case. The only problem was that I didn’t want to sell,” she explains to us. “My father didn’t come from much. I remember him telling us how our grandfather had a soap shop in Mochi Gate, and that he took a loan from his brother-in-law to open it. The day after he opened it, the monsoon rains kicked off and all the soap in his store was washed away into the streets.”

There is a quiver in her voice. Mrs Shah never knew her grandfather, but she tells us how her own father would tear-up every time he mentioned this story. “He loved that house. He loved that area. Even towards the end when he was very old and sick, if anyone visited from Mochi to come see him he would find the strength to talk to them.”

“Why did we move? Oh well it was also a horrible place to live in,” she says when asked. The family started moving away from Mochi as early as 1985, and by 1995 everyone had settled in either Defence, Model Town, or Garden Town. “There were no facilities there and everyone that lived there slowly moved away. Businesses still remain there. My family still owns many shops and a couple of plazas in that area but we don’t live there anymore. All the good schools and places to go out are far away from the old city and everyone has shifted from there.”

That is a problem. Once upon a time, the Walled City was home to many of Lahore’s ashrafiya. So long as they lived here, they advocated for the upkeep and maintenance of the area and kept it a living, breathing, residential area. “The only people that live here now are the ones that have no option but to live here. They have no other option,” explains another property dealer. Because of this, the Walled City has become a strange slush of economic necessity, glowups done by the Walled City Authority of Lahore and absolute desolation.

A dead-end?

This is the problem we find ourselves with. Property prices in the walled city average at around Rs 20 lakh per marla in some areas, rivaling very posh locations. However, there is no distinction between commercial and residential real estate and the land deeds in this region are confusing and messy. Ownership documents are sometimes from colonial times. And most importantly, the place is uninhabitable.

“A lot can be learned from the history of this area. The commercialisation of the area began when the railway station was built adjacent to the Delhi Gate. The station was built during the colonial era in 1860, at the intersection of Empress Road, Allama Iqbal Road and Circular Road. Later, a bus station opposite the railway station was opened and made operational. As a result of these infrastructural developments, the eastern side of the Walled City saw the rise of commercial activities. Overnight, bazaars started emerging and spread like wildfire throughout the inner city. Another key point of commercialisation was the Shah Alam Muhalla, and therein, bazaars began penetrating inwards,” explains a senior director at the Walled City Authority.

This fascinating history elucidates that transportation has been indispensable to the area’s commercialisation. With the construction of the railway station and bus adda, the Walled City became the jugular vein, regulating the flow of traffic in various directions. These conditions made the space ripe for commercial activities.

This brings us to a key question: How did commercialisation affect local residents?

“In the Walled City, the average size of a house is between 3-5 marlas. You have small houses, clustered in narrow alleys. When commercial activity developed along the streets, these houses skyrocketed in value,” our source from the WCLA says.

As scope of business increased, the population census depicted that the old city’s population decreased, and this trend is still prevalent. Due to commercialisation, the land prices have become exorbitant.

“People are able to sell their 2-3 marla house, and buy a bigger house in a modern housing society at essentially the same price. People are actually eager to sell their cramped makaans and shift to more spacious houses.”

Whereas population increase at a given area is typically perceived as a problem, the situation is inverted here.

“Here, the residential population has been steadily decreasing which is a problem faced by the local inhabitants. As the residents leave for greener pastures in the modern areas of Lahore, outsiders start filling their space. For example, recent years have seen an influx of Pashtun migrants in the area. Now, they don’t share a relationship with the local abaadi. This ends up affecting the entire social fabric.”

“There are many dimensions to how the Walled City’s profile is changing. How the city’s residential areas are changing their character mirrors, the changing psychographics. People coming from different backgrounds set different cultural parameters once they settle here. This is often difficult for the locals to adjust to,” added Nadhra Shahbaz, Professor of History at LUMS.

The local abaadi is mainly concentrated around the Taxali Gate area and Bhaati gate areas. Akbari Mandi, Shia Muhalla and Mochi Darwaza also house considerable local abaadi.

While the area is coveted as a tourist destination, the actual living conditions are extremely difficult. Mobility is restricted as cars can’t pass through narrow streets, making the Walled City only suitable for bikers and pedestrians.

“Moreover, basic amenities such as health hygiene and clean drinking water aren’t available. Facilities for modern living are simply not accessible in the inner Walled City. Coupled with traffic congestion, most residents dream of relocating to modern areas of the city that are equipped with such amenities,” our source detailed.

Finding a fine balance

There is no hard data regarding the ownership and migration patterns from the walled city of Lahore to newer residential areas. What is clear from anecdotal and testimonial evidence however is that people want to move away from the area. The problem is in finding a fine balance between making the area liveable and also protecting its cultural heritage. For that, the government would need to figure out a plan to rehabilitate the area and renovate it in large chunks either without displacing local populations or after providing them with fair compensation.

The WCLA is taking steps to protect the cultural heritage. For example, “high architecture merit buildings” are marked out. Construction on them or in their vicinity is banned. Furthermore, they can’t be sold, demolished or used for commercial purposes.

Nevertheless, commercialisation has incurred a deep impact on the local infrastructure and heritage. According to Nadhra Shahbaz, a History Professor at LUMS, “there is a continuous movement of people between developed parts to lesser developed parts in a place. Migrations are forever. People are not stationary.”

Shahbaz said that in Lahore’s case, the shape of the city is still changing based on colonial patterns. The presence of utilities such as water and electricity, along with the emergence of new societies have been governing the movements of people within the city. “People put up with this unless they have a choice to move out, and this is predominantly based on financial conditions,” indicated Shahbaz. n

By Shahzad Paracha

The airconditioning was off and even by Karachi standards it was a particularly hot February afternoon. At the office of the CEO of the Sindh Mass Transit Authority (SMTA), tempers were flaring up. Brows were furrowed, thinly veiled insults were being traded, and beads of sweat were likely running down the back of the many necks in the room.

On one side sat Sohaib Shafique, GMSouth of the National Radio Transmission Company (NRTC) and on the other side was Zubair Chann, the CEO of the Sindh Mass Transit Authority (SMTA). As tensions rose, so did the voices until Chann and Shafique found themselves in a full-blown shouting match. Others present in the room had to intervene and stop the altercation from getting physical.

But wait a second. What would propel the CEO of a provincial mass transit authority to almost come to blows with the chairman of a federally owned company responsible for the manufacturing of telecommunication equipment in Pakistan?

The answer: Over 250 buses in Karachi that have the potential to help solve the massive public transport problems that exist in the city of more than 15 million people.

Launched by the PPP government in June 2022, the People’s Bus Service in Karachi and Larkana was supposed to operate just over 250 buses. It was a pretty simple matter. The Sindh Government would set aside a budget for the project and the SMTA would then procure buses, plan routes, figure out pricing and revenue collection, hire staff, and launch the project. Instead, the project was sub-let to the NRTC — a company that has no competence or relevance to public transportation.

That’s right, a federally owned company that produces telecommunication and electrical equipment has been awarded a contract for the running of a provincial bus service. So what is going on? Some have pointed towards the preferences of certain cabinet members for officials in the NRTC. But the web behind these buses is complicated and intertwined. To understand it, we need to go to the beginning.

The people’s bus service

Let’s take a step back. In June 2022, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari inaugurated the intra-district Peoples Bus Service project for Karachi. Under the project, around 240 air-conditioned buses imported from China will be plied on seven routes in the me-

Karachi’s desperate need for mass transit

Perhaps one of Karachi’s greatest woes has been the alarming state of its public transport system. For a city of over 15 million people (already a vastly underreported number) public transport in Pakistan’s largest metropolis is rickety and riddled with problems at best and non-existent at worst. Between 2010 and 2015, the number of buses in the city went down from 22,000 to 13,000. However, various sources including the Karachi Transport Ittehad (KTI) claim the number has fallen below 5000. Reliance has grown heavily on cars and motorcycles, with traffic congestion contributing to increased air and noise pollution, leading to health problems, high accident rates, and environmental degradation. The impact that good public transport can have on the living standards of any population is staggering. Just think of it this way: one of the biggest factors in people choosing their place of employment is how long the commute is. This then leads to other decisions such as where a person decides to live, and where they send their children to school. As a result, transport woes have a direct and often visceral impact on quality of life, and it is usually marginalised groups like women and the disabled that are most acutely affected by these problems. So what is the solution to Karachi’s urban transport mess? Ideally, large cities should be interconnected by a system of underground, on-road, and overhead trains and buses that run around the clock. In Karachi’s case, the first baby-step would be putting more buses on the road.

tropolis. The longest route on the bus would cost Rs 50.

The buses were to run on seven routes. Route 1 commenced its operations in June running from Model Colony to Tower, covering 29.5 kilometres and having 38 stations. The other six routes include the areas from North Karachi to Indus Hospital (Korangi) 32.9km; Nagan Chowrangi to Singer Chowrangi (Korangi Industrial Area) 33km; North Karachi to Dockyard 30.4km; Surjani Town to PAF Masroor 28.2km; Gulshan-i-Bihar (Orangi Town) to Singer Chowrangi 29km and Mosamiyat to Baldia Town 28.9km.

Alongside Bilawal Bhutto during this inauguration was Sharjeel Memon, the information minister in Sindh who has been the focal person for the People’s Bus Project.

To manage this project, the provincial government had established the Sindh Mass Transit Authority (SMTA) solely focused upon providing safe, efficient, and comfortable urban transportation systems in the major cities of Sindh. This in itself is a good step for the beleaguered citizens of Sindh ravaged by high inflation, sky rocketing fuel prices and endemic corruption in the province. But the involvement of the SMTA in the project seems to have been diluted, and strangely enough it is the National Radio and Transmission Company (NRTC) that is at the forefront of the project.

You see, in the first phase of the People’s Bus Service the SMTA was to operate 250 city buses and had to import 250 Buses for this purpose. Of these, there would be 150 low entry diesel-hybrid city buses of 12m in length and

100 low entry diesel-hybrid city buses of 8.5m in length for Karachi and Larkana. Sources close to the transport department informed Profit that an initial bidding process had taken place for the award of the Red Line (for which the above mentioned routes have been designated) but was then cancelled without any explanation to any of the participants. The contract was then unilaterally awarded to the NRTC.

Why the NRTC?

That is the four billion rupee question. The NRTC is a high tech industry engaged in manufacturing of telecommunication equipment in Pakistan. The NRTC is an organisation of the Ministry of Defence Production (MoDP) is the sole National Electronic Industry engaged in design and development of cutting edge technologies in fields such as Robotics, Public Safety Network Communication, Power, Surveillance, Number Plates, Ground Surveillance Radars, and Cyber Security.

Questions were immediately raised about whether the awarding of the contract to the NRTC was against the rules of the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) which disallows any government tender to be given to a department that does not have the expertise in the relevant field. “By doing this SMTA is clearly violating PPRA rules by outsourcing ‘maintenance of Sindh Intra district peoples bus service’ project to non-transport, in this case NRTC,” said one source close to the story.

So why would the SMTA do this? The transit authority has maintained a tacit silence on the issue and has not responded to Profit’s many queries. However, sources close to the issue have said on condition of anonymity that the NRTC’s involvement was politically motivated and the SMTA had no other option but to comply with the wishes of senior ministers in the government.

Meanwhile, in different meetings, the high ups of the Transport & Mass Transit Department and GM-South of NRTC in their in-house discussion claimed that NRTC is a sovereign body and the Sindh Government has a mandate to award contracts on Government-to-Government basis to NRTC.

MD SMTA Kamal Dayo did not respond to queries. Other senior officials continued to hesitate in speaking up and shifted the blame around before expressing no knowledge of the issue. On the other hand, GM South NRTC Sohaib Soddiqui told Profit that this was a misrepresentation of facts. “There is no PPRA rules violation and the department did not also sub-let the projects. SMTA and NRTC are government of Pakistan departments and this is a successful project,” he said.

Upon being pressed, the GM did not provide any explanation for his statement and did not answer the question of how the NRTC could get the contract without violating PPRA rules. He was also unable to provide an answer regarding what the NRTC’s competence is to be managing this project.

Sources with the transit department have continued to say that this decision to unilaterally award the contract was opposed intensely by the SMTA brass at the time, but they were overruled in order to safeguard and perpetuate the political interests of a provincial minister. “We recorded our protest back then because we knew it would be against PPRA rules. However, nothing could be done at that point and we had to give the go-ahead,”

Statistics from an academic article titled “An empirical review of Karachi’s transportation predicaments” published in the Journal of Transport & Health in March 2019. Most people rely on private modes of transport in Karachi with more bikes hitting the road they said.

The problems with the NRTC takeover

This is where things stand. The Sindh Government launched a mass transit project that included 250 buses on seven routes as well as an additional ‘white line’ bus service for which they imported electric buses. Separately from this, they also launched a ‘pink’ bus service meant for women passengers. But for some reason, the National Radio Transmission Company was given the tender to import these buses and manage them. And that isn’t where this strange mixing of jurisdictional lines and awarding of contracts end.

Initially, when the NRTC was vying for the contract the mass transit department and

Purchase of the buses

The outlay of the purchase of buses is $38 million, which is a huge amount of foreign currency for a cash strapped country like Pakistan. Approximately 150 buses have been imported at a cost of Rs 8.0 billion ($23 million equivalent) and handed over to NRTC. Again, the purchase of these buses was in a very opaque manner with only one supplier, Higer of China qualifying, and buses being provided at an approximately 20% higher rate than comparable, sources disclosed.Why other suppliers were not evaluated or looked at especially in the presence of local manufacturers who could import CKD kits, manufacture here and provide the same quality buses at a lower cost is a question that needs to be answered. Insiders say that the specifications and requirements were documented in such a manner that only Higer could have qualified. Again, this is a huge loss to the Exchequer and the people of Sindh because due process and transparency was fell by the wayside.

other stakeholders were told that they had a Turkish partner who would assist them with the technical know-how. This allayed some concerns but as soon as the NRTC was awarded the contract the partner disappeared from conversations and was nowhere to be found.

Since the NRTC is not a transport company, they really had no idea how to manage this project. They further sub-leased the route to the present network operators like GRC (Pvt.) Ltd, Al-Shayma Services, Faisal Movers, KTN etc. all of whom are non-standardized transporters as per international norms and standard operating procedures.

To just illustrate just one aspect of the unprofessional & non-technical nature of the way the NRTC bus routes are operated in Karachi, it has been learnt that NRTC was unable to conduct its own independent proper technical study by experts in the mass-transit field. Rather it is relying only on the study done by the Sindh Government.

The present sub-contractors are providing a below par service on the new buses and hence the service is missing the four key elements of a scheduled bus service — timings, route, stops and fare are still not in place and are variable. In addition, there is no Information Technology based ticketing or monitoring system.

Because these companies are subcontracted to run the service, many old habits such as lingering of busses on route to pick up paying passengers at non-designated stops coupled with a structural misunderstanding of how a bus service should be run have contributed to the fact that the Peoples Bus Service is being run in the same way as previous such bus schemes.

This means that the bus service has essentially been subcontracted three times and is four times removed from the Sindh Mass Transit Authority which has the jurisdiction to run the project. The SMTA sub-let it to the NRTC which has sub-let it to TIP who have in-turn sub-let it to Al-Shayma, which has in turn sublet to various local contractors, who have then sold individual routes to operators, which has badly affected the quality of the service.

NRTC Dispute with SMTA

And this is where we get back to the fight. The reason the SMTA’s CEO and NRTC’s chairman almost came to blows was that the project involves some serious money and revenue collection. The government of Sindh had created the SMTA particularly to manage Karachi’s abysmal public sector transport situation. However, for the management contract of such a product to be awarded to a company like the NRTC ruffled the feathers of the SMTA high-ups.

Soon after the near-brawl, Channa was transferred from his post as CEO because he continued to raise questions about how the NRTC could take over the project with no competence on the issue. Profit reached out to multiple officials of the NRTC but this correspondent was received coldly and with curt, empty answers. Profit also reached out to Sindh Information Minister Sharjeel Memon multiple times but did not receive any response despite messages having been read. Interestingly enough, Mr Memon’s display picture on Whatsapp is an image of a bus from the People’s Bus Service. Officials of the SMTA expressed their apologies and said they could not comment, but some high-ups in the authority on the condition of anonymity expressed anger towards the blatant awarding of the contract to the NRTC. “They are playing political favourites,” said one of the sources that spoke anonymously.

Some of the issues are that the NRTC has

Route problems

“The sidewalk at the stop I boarded the bus at, Nursery, is dug up. The grey structure is still dishevelled. Except for the red and white painted curb, nothing about this stop says new service. The map for Route 1 identifies 38 stops along the roughly 30km corridor and Nursery is one of them. The bus, however, stops again 200m ahead, and then again, about 400m ahead, before reaching the next notified stop, FTC. From there to Tower, the bus would make far more than 38 stops, sometimes stopping in the middle of nowhere to drop off a loud passenger. In the absence of clearly notified and marked stations, each stop is a negotiation between an aggressive passenger, a clueless conductor and a pliant driver. Some of the passenger aggression stems from confusion over the route.” - From a review of the Red Line service that appeared in Dawn.

been unable to undertake the development of stops, yards, management & financial controls, or even a main centralised command and control centre for SMTA as promised. What little work has been done is on an ad hoc basis and is not up to international specifications.

One of the major disputes is on the installation of the Automatic Revenue Collection System (ARC). The ARC and associated IT systems such as ticket issuance etc. was to be installed by NRTC, but until now that has not been done. In the absence of an ARC there is no way to verify what revenue is being collected and how much is actually making it back to the Sindh Government. As per information NRTC has paid its vendor GCS (Pvt.) Ltd. in full for the system but they have been unable to deliver it to date.

Ill-conceived from the get-go

In the absence of proper financial control and the reliance on human interaction for issuance and collection of tickets there is a significant leakage that is happening. That is even more surprising is that when SMTA was pushing for an internal extended audit of accounts and physical audit by third parties to verify the revenues collected and of the numbers, NRTC flatley refused and black balled them. So again, here the people of Sindh are losing out because of belligerence of NRTC and leakage from the system.

In the same way the NRTC is refusing to account to SMTA for the ad revenue that is collected. NRTC is offering SMTA only Rs. 70,000/- per month per bus as additional revenue from advertising on the buses, while they are averaging between Rs. 400,000 – Rs. 500,000 per bus.

While, the agreement with NRTC is that NFR there will be an equal split between the two parties, which is not being followed. The second main point of contention is that fuel indexation formula. This formula was put together by qualified third parties, in this case Ernst and Young (EY) and Exponent Engineering, both of whom are of international repute. Yet, NRTC is belligerent that the formula is wrong and that it needs to be changed.

When the SMTA and its consultants have pushed back and asked for a written alternative of how NRTC wants the calculations done or its reservations, the NRTC team is unable to provide them anything in writing.

NRTC is also belligerent that the number of passengers per day provided by SMTA and consultants is wrong. The consultants had provided a number of 700 passengers per bus a day and it is NRTC’s contention that they don’t get more than 400 passengers a day. The number provided by NRTC is a wild guess at best because they have been unable to conduct their own independent survey due to their lack of knowledge about urban transport and its associated protocols.

The project itself, envisioned by a presumably more enlightened third generation leadership of the PPP under Bilawal Bhutto, to address Karachi’s perennial public transport’s nightmarish problems, has evidently come crashing down owing to the same old problems. It seems that even this solution to Karachi’s mess of a public bus service became a problem for all the bottom feeders living off it. n

China wants our Cherries. But will Pakistan rise to the occasion?

country Chile.

And then there is Pakistan, which finds itself way down on the list (number 48) of cherry producing countries in the world. At just over 6000 tonnes produced a year, cherries are neither a major agricultural product for Pakistan and nor do we export any. The unfortunate part is that Pakistan very much could be. In the North, vast swathes of Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) are ideal for growing cherries. They have been grown in the region for centuries and this is in fact where most of Pakistan’s cherries come from. But that isn’t all. Balochistan over the past few years has also emerged as a great location for growing cherries.

By Abdullah Niazi

In Japan, the Cherry Blossom has many purposes. It serves as a symbol for life and death, it is a cultural marker, and the annual Cherry Blossom Festival in the island nation attracts tourists from around the world every year.

Scenic views of Cherry gardens stretching as far as the eye can see with their gentle pink petals scattered all over the floor have become synonymous with the land of the rising sun. Despite this, Japan does not even crack the list of the top 25 cherry producing countries in the world. In fact, they rank number 26 on the list. Surprisingly enough, Turkey is the largest producer of cherries in the world and the biggest exporter is the South American

With all this the question arises, can Pakistan utilise its cherry potential and become an exporter? The answer is yes, and we’re already on the path to do exactly so. A report from last week revealed that following the opening of the China-Pakistan border on April 1, the Chinese government has allowed the import of cherries from Pakistan. China is actually a very large emerging market for Pakistan’s cherries. The only problem is that the Chinese have very strict regulations on the import of perishable fruits. So what can Pakistan do to encourage cherry farming and open up a rich new market for farmers?

Pakistan’s cherries

Much like in Japan, there are Cherry Blossoms in Pakistan too. Hunza, for example, is a tourist location where you can find clusters of these trees in some locations. However, cherries are not grown in large swathes across Gilgit Baltistan. Rather, most farmers have few trees and grow them within their homes or on very small tracts of land spread far apart. Because of this, there is no real cherry belt in the country even though there is a cherry growing region.

According to MNFS&R statistics and FAO Statistics, the total production of fresh cherries in 2016 in mainland Pakistan was 2,120 tonnes, with a world ranking of 47th producer. However, these figures do not include production from Gilgit-Baltistan (GB), because it is treated as a disputed area. When GB’s production of 3,898 tonnes, grown on 1,363 ha (2014) of land is included, the total cherry production of Pakistan adds up to 6,013 tonnes, and Pakistan’s ranking improves to 45th.

GB and Balochistan provinces are the main cherry growing regions in Pakistan. The largest producer is GB, with a 64.77% share in the total cherry production in 2014. The second largest producer is Balochistan with a share of 32.92%. The remaining 2.31% is produced in KPK. The total area devoted to cherries in Pakistan is about 2,512 ha. The average yield in Pakistan is calculated as 2.42 t/ha, which comes to about 45% of the global average.

The thing about fruits like the cherry is that they are high-value products that can change the lives of small farmers if grown correctly and with guidance. Cherry production in Pakistan has been expanding at a modest rate of 2.47% per annum during 2001-16, which is higher than the growth in population at 2.24%.

This implies that per capita consumption is slowly and gradually improving overtime. Most of the increase came from the expansion in area while per ha yield also improved during the period (Table 2). Because of its high commercial value, farmers and traders are extremely careful in handling the product at every stage of the value chain. Still, postharvest losses range from 10% in the mainland to 20% in GB, without including the losses during transportation and at the wholesale and retail levels. Fruits that are damaged during harvest are separated at the time of grading, and are dried and sold, separately.

The export potential

This is where the problem comes in. Pakistan has not had a bad start in cherry growing. Starting from a low base, expansion in area under cherry and its production is higher than the world average growth rates. However, Pakistan faces the same problem in this crop that it faces in so many others — average yield. Because of poor farming practices, while there are a lot of cherry trees in Pakistan, they do not grow as many cherries as the world average. This stops Pakistan from achieving its cherry export potential.

According to a 2020 report of the planning commission, almost 99% of cherries produced in the country are consumed in the domestic market. As a matter of proximity to nearest consumer markets, cherries produced in GB are supplied and sold in the markets of Islamabad and Punjab, while fresh cherries coming from Balochistan are sold in the urban centres of Sindh, such as Karachi and Hyderabad and Southern Punjab.

“Cherry production in Pakistan is far behind the world level in terms of per ha yield, export to production ratio, export and export price. For example, Pakistan gets only 40% of the world average yield, it exports a negligible quantity while globally 24% of the production is exported, and its export earns only 56% of the average world export price, suggesting that Pakistani cherry does not compete in the international market due to its poor quality. However, the farm gate price of cherries in Pakistan is far below the international average farm gate price, which shows that Pakistan has a competitive edge over the global cherry value chain at the production level,” reads the report.

In comparison, global cherry production has increased from 2.9 million tonnes in 2001 to 3.6 million tonnes during 2017 with an average growth rate of 1.6% per annum. This growth in production is higher than the world population growth of 1.19% during the period suggesting international growth in per capita consumption, although relatively slowly. Most of the increase in cherry production came from the expansion in per ha yield at 5.5% per annum, while area growth during the period is insignificant at 0.2% per annum.

The largest volumes of cherry are traded and consumed as fresh. As reported earlier, small quantities that are bruised during harvest and separated out during grading, are dried and traded in niche markets. Cherry exports surpassed US$2.3 billion in 2017, an increase from US$383 million since 2001 with an average annual growth rate of 7.8% in its quantities and 11.7% in values. Pakistan’s main market in this would be China — where transporting cherries directly through the border would be much easier and the supply chain could be tailored for this need.

The China equation

Following the opening of the China-Pakistan border on April 1, the Chinese government has allowed the import of cherries from Pakistan. But the trade requires stiff phytosanitary standards that are difficult to comply with, according to experts.

The Chinese embassy informed the Ministry of National Food security and Research through a letter that the General Administration of Customs of the People's Republic of China (GACC) has decided to carry out compliance inspections through remote video investigations on orchards and cold treatment facilities for the export of fresh cherries from Pakistan to China.

Zulfiqar Monin, a leading exporter of fresh fruit, has said that the cherries produced in Pakistan, especially those from Gilgit Baltistan, are juicier than normal cherries but also highly perishable. Because of the Chinese protocols, these cherries cannot be exported to China under the existing phytosanitary measures. Under the protocol, local cherries need to be kept under one-degree temperature for over 18 days, and after that period, the health of the fruit will be checked for final export.

The only way to make the local fruits able to enter into the Chinese market is to grow imported cherry plants that may produce fruits with a shelf life of around 25 days in one degree centigrade. The existing fruits can’t survive under one degree centigrade for more than one week.

However, there is no packhouse or major cold storage to keep the cherry and treat them as per protocol in Gilgit-Baltistan. To fa- cilitate the export to China, the existing rules need to be relaxed, and imported cherries need to be cultivated as a long-term strategy.

Cherry is a seasonal fruit with a limited lifetime grown throughout the lowlands of Gilgit Baltistan. Some of its varieties are black, red, and French cherry. It is a major source of cash for hundreds of families in the region. It has recently garnered the attention of traders in Gilgit Baltistan and has been started as a business by supplying to the rest of the country in Pakistan.

With trade permission, the local cherry industry can blossom as China is the largest consumer of cherries in the world. The Chinese and Pakistani governments have worked together since 2019 to establish an agreement on the export of fresh cherries from Pakistan to China. The export protocol includes strict conditions on quarantine pests and cold treatment facilities, which must be met by cherry orchards, packaging plants, and refrigerated warehouses. With cherries from Pakistan enjoying zero tariffs when exported to China under the China-Pakistan Free Trade Agreement, the cherry industry in Pakistan has the potential to grow further.

Currently only 10% of the cherries are available for export, but there is significant potential for further export growth. With China importing more than 200,000 tons of cherries annually, the approval of Pakistani cherries to enter the Chinese market is expected to drive the development of Pakistan’s domestic cherry industry. n

Ammar H. Khan OPINION