Cotton arena: PCGA meeting today to analyse developments

A meeting of the Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA) held in Karachi on Monday to analyse the latest developments on the cotton arena, the major agenda was how to stop cotton prices from decline in the local market.
Presiding over the meeting, Ex-Chairman of the PCGA AND Member of the Provincial Assembly (MPA) Rana Abdul Sattar, urged the government to ask the Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) to intervene in the market to bring long-lasting stability in the prices, so the growers and ginners will take a sign of relief because prices before one-year prices hit all-time high at Rs 14,000 but now the rates came down to Rs 5,300.
Textile sector is the major earner of foreign exchange, if the government not intervene in the market, how the ginners run their business in loss, he said.
It a fact that under the circumstances, demand for cotton is falling the world over and growers and ginners were worried about the decline in rates, in Pakistan, during the current season, country may achieve over 13 million bales of cotton despite monsoon and floods in Sindh cotton belt. Despite, this positive factor, exports in textile sector may not achieve desired target due to decline in foreign orders.
It is expected that the consumption of a record cotton production and declining consumption will expand global stockpiles by the most since 2005, driving more fall in the prices of this year's worst-performing commodity.
On the other hand, in the absences of basic requirements such as water, power electricity, gas supply and roads, the ginners were not able to meet the deadlines for the foreign orders as a result the country is losing huge foreign exchange. Leading analyst Naseem Usman said that in fact, high cost of production during the harvesting season of cotton causing jitters among the growers.
The PCGA chairman, Ammanullah Quraishi who is in Lahore, suggested on phone that the TCP should fix the fine quality of seeds cotton at Rs 6,500, medium variety at Rs 5,500 and inferior type at Rs 4,500, Naseem said.