Shortfall in cotton output feared

The key players of the cotton sector fear that the country would face a shortfall in the production of cotton this season against the claims of government officials who predict a bumper crop.
Senior cotton brokers have expressed their concerns over the negligent attitude of the authorities concerned, which, they say, have not carried out a comprehensive study prior to the start of cotton sowing season this year as well.
The cotton players informed that the cotton authorities could have increased the cotton production and the cultivation area, if they had carried out proper analysis and surveys.
"The statistics show that if the government arranged ample water supply to the crop and adopted the modern techniques, the cotton figures could have been enhanced besides obtaining contamination-free crop," said Ghulam Rabbani, Chief Executive of Drachenberg Trading Company, Texas (USA). Referring to the official statistics, he said that sowing position of cotton in Punjab is about three percent less than last year.
"Punjab has achieved about 97 percent of sowing against its set target of 6.321 million acres," he added. A senior trader at the Karachi Cotton Association (KCA) said that Sindh was expected to observe 18 percent decline in the cotton sowing as compared to the last year.
"In Sindh, cotton has been sown on about 1.124 million acres, which is 18 percent less than the target of 1.324 million acres," he remarked. He mentioned that the crop has also been sown on around one million acres in Balochistan as well.
"I think the country could face a cotton output shortfall of 0.8 million bales in comparison to last year''s achieved target of 12.37 million bales," he anticipated.
The trader said that the sowing process in Sindh was delayed and that would also delay the crop harvesting by around 20 days or one month.
Some of the cotton players stressed the need to revive the actual role of Federal Seed Certification Department (FSCD) as they believed that the concerned department was not professionally involved with the growers this year as well and restricted itself to the monitoring of the crop.
"The concerned authorities should have imported and provided ''hybird seed'' to the growers, which would have helped to enhance the productivity besides increasing the crop size," Rabbani suggested.
"Since cotton-pickers are paid on weightage basis, they normally mix up trash in the cotton flowers as they want to earn more," he remarked. He said that this practice should have been discouraged by providing smart incentives to the pickers.
Some cotton experts believed that the government should build small water reservoirs in order to supply ample water to the crop. The country last year harvested 12.37 million bales against the consumption of around 15.2 million bales.