Current cotton output up 53 percent: PCGA

Higher yield has pushed the cotton production up by over 53 percent till the middle of the current month, which might be against all expectations and speculation about the overall production for the season. Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association reported a production of 3.613 million bales compared to 2.363 million of last year, a jump of 53.5 percent.
Cotton experts said that not only the area of cultivation of cotton has increased but the yield per acre also increased. A number of growers both in Sindh and Punjab preferred to opt for cotton because of less water availability. Cotton is the only big cash crop, which requires less water.
Punjab has so far produced 2.633 million bales, an increase of 53.8 percent. Sindh also registered an increase of 52.9 percent with a production of 980,297 bales.
The government had predicted a production of 11 million bales but the arrival of cotton in both the provinces seems to be more than 11 million bales.
Ginners said: "We can safely say that production would be around 11.5 to 12 million bales 'if nothing goes wrong till the end of March'."
However, last month rain did produce some negative impact and reports of red leaf were coming from both Sindh and Punjab but ginners said the effect was negligibly small.
Textile millers said they accelerated their pace of buying cotton from the ginners. So far the textile mills bought 2.712 million bales. Meanwhile, the Trading Corporation of Pakistan has also bought over 250,000 bales.
Textile millers said they could absorb the whole cotton production even if it reaches 12 million bales as their capacity has increased. The textile industry has invested about 3 billion dollars in four years to modernise and equip itself for enhanced quality production.
Last year the textile industry imported about 2 million bales despite a production of about 9.7 million bales showing their increased capacity for utilisation of raw cotton.
The exporters have also geared up their effort to export the raw cotton. Bangladesh were so far the biggest importers of Pakistani cotton and Pakistan's total export was reported about 200,000 bales.