The Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA) has asked the textile and agriculture ministries and the All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (Aptma) to evolve a policy for countering contamination of cotton. Talking to newsmen on Friday, PCGA Chairman Muhammad Akram said, "Around 15 to 20 percent of our total production loses 50 percent value annually due to contamination."
He said it was important for the stakeholders to devise a strategy for making unbiased conditions in government departments to promote better understanding between the private and public sectors. He added that Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) had promised to resolve the issue of paying withholding tax by ginners, and FBR would issue SRO in this regard.
He said PCGA would meet Textile Secretary Abdul Rauf, Agriculture Secretary Jawed Awan and officials of related ministries to discuss the issue of supply and standard of pesticides and fertiliser in a meeting next week.
He said that DAP prices have doubled as 40 kg bag is available at about Rs 4,000 while average prices of pesticides have been raised by 100 percent within a year. He said the price of seed-cotton (phutti) was also touching Rs 1,900 per 40 kg.
He said that around 1,100 member factories of PCGA were facing high cost of doing business. Around 881 ginning units were functioning in Punjab while 205 were operating in Sindh under the umbrella of PCGA.
The country will face around 20 percent shortfall of cotton yield due to mealy bug and cotton leaf curl virus (CLCV) attack and reddening of leaf, a director on Karachi Cotton Association and trader, Ghulam Rabbani said. He said the federal government set the target of 14.11 million cotton bales for the crop season 2008-09. There would be a shortfall of around 3.1 million bales, he added.
Comments
Comments are closed.