Free market policy to continue: government to pull out of cotton business: official

Free market policy will continue and government will pull completely out of cotton business and focus mainly on regulation, said Aamer Irshad Chief Food and Agriculture Planning Commission.
Cotton will continue as an important contributor to the national economy and private sector will be encouraged to lead innovation, bring knowledge and investment in cotton technology (value chain and varietal development), Irshad said while address at the fifth day of the International Cotton Advisory Committee, 75th Plenary Meeting here on Thursday.
The government will further strengthen its cotton governance and investment in cotton will focus on improving productivity and efficiency, he added.
He further said that cotton production was 14.2 during year 2004-05 and it was decreased to 10 million bales in 2015-16. However, he said that various policy instruments such as textiles Policy, Strategic Trade Policy Framework and Vision 2025 along with the organisations has been taken by the government for brining improvement in the sector.
He said that cotton would continue to be prime contributor in Pakistan's economy and government needs to facilitate to improve yield by carrying out necessary legislation such as enactment of Plant Breeders Right Bill and by providing support to reduce the cost of doing business.
Muhammad Ilyas Sarwar Pakistan Central Cotton Committee Central Cotton Research Institute urged for research on high yielding with better fibre quality cotton varieties. He said cotton trading houses should be established to make them beneficial for all stakeholders. To reduce the production cost through technologies and subsidized inputs.
Earlier first session of the day with topic "the role of public sector in the cotton industry" was chaired by Abid Javed, Secretary, Ministry of Food Security and Research.
Terry Townsend, a cotton analyst from USA, deliberated on the topic of "role of government in the cotton industry; first, do no harm". He informed that world cotton mill use which was only 286,000 tons/year during 1950s increased to 27 million tons during 2007-08 however during next ten years despite increase in world's population the world cotton production reduced by 3 million tons. He said that countries should stop giving support and subsidies to the polyester. The second session of the day and over all 8th Open Session of the Plenary Meeting was chaired by Kanwar M. Usman, Director, Research, Development and Advisory Cell of Ministry of Textile Industry.
The topic was Confronting Inter-Fiber Competition. Usman said that manmade fiber is the main threat to cotton as their consumption has now increased to 3 times as compared to cotton.
Lorena Ruiz from ICAC secretariat mentioned the demand and supply of cotton, cotton yarn and cotton fabric and compared with the manmade fiber based products especially polyester.
She said that China is not only the second largest cotton producer by first largest polyester fiber and polyester filaments. She also mentioned that in finished products the polyester based fiber mix has continuously been increasing.
She said that main reasons for polyester dominance is due to its cheap and as it is manufactured in controlled environment so have better quality and less wastage. She said that it is important that we should have campaigns that Cotton is environment friendly so use cotton based products.
The third presentation was made by Andreas Engelhardt, the publisher of "Fiber Year".
He said that situation is quite scary as polyester has an average growth rate of 7 percent.
He identified that production capacity of polyester feed stock is quite high and if more polyester would be required then production can be increased in no time.
He said that China is the biggest player and China's although not the member of ICAC role would be important to determine the world demand and supply of manmade fibers and cotton.
He said that cotton consumption is not likely to grow much in next five years; however, polyester would increase much rapidly. The chair said that ICAC is the forum to devise strategy to promote and increase the utilisation of cotton based products.