Federal Minister for Food Agriculture and Livestock Sikander Hayat Khan Bosan has said that Federal Government would ask Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) to purchase cotton from growers if prices continued to fall further.
Addressing a press conference after presiding over the general body meeting of Pakistan Central Cotton Committee (PCCC) here Monday, he said that government wanted to ensure that cotton growers should get better price for their crop and added that cotton prices were being monitored.
"Presently, cotton prices are down in the market and if they go down further we will ask TCP to enter the market to stabilise prices," he said.
Secretary MINFAL, Muhammad Ismail Qureshi and Vice-chairman PCCC, Dr Ibad Badar Siddiqui were also present on the occasion.
Bosan said the government had already raised support price of Phutti (cottonseed) by Rs 50 to Rs 975 per 40 kilograms much before the commencement of season to encourage farmers to grow more cotton.
Bosan said that the meeting, which reviewed the crop situation in the country, had observed that weather was favourable for the crop as days were warm and nights were cool and there were no reports of pest attack so far from any area.
Hopefully, the country would have good crop this season, he added.
The minister said that the meeting had unanimously resolved to focus on research and development and sought an increase in its budget to have new varieties of cotton.
Government had raised the budget for research and development in the current fiscal to Rs 70 million. This increase would be exclusively for research purposes, and could not be utilised for any other purpose. The federal government would spend Rs 50 million and PCCC Rs20 million, he added.
To a question, he said that there was a need to further enhance spending on research purpose and the government would double spending on research to Rs 130 million in the next budget.
Bosan said that the meeting agreed to raise the amount of Cotton Cess from Rs 11 per bale of 170 kg to Rs20 per bale. This would give an additional amount of Rs20 million raising the total collection to Rs 134 million. The surplus would be available for research.
The minister said that some 450,000 bales of cotton would be lost due to damage of 300,000 acres of cotton field in Punjab following rains. However, he hoped that this loss would be compensated due to rise of 02 percent in total area under cotton this year, which was estimated at 3.2 million hectares.
He said that PCCL would not vacate the land unless it was provided a suitable, alternate space for its building.
To a question regarding production of clean cotton he said that until the mills paid good prices to growers for supplying contamination free cotton this mechanism would not work. "We have to provide incentives to growers so that they can produce and supply clean cotton to textile mills and exporters," he observed.
Bosan said that a high level meeting had been convened in Islamabad this week to discuss this issue. All stakeholders - including Commerce Ministry, Textile Ministry, APTMA, PCGA, growers -would attend this meeting and decide a strategy to restart clean cotton production, he added.
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