The State Bank of Pakistan has allowed loans up to Rs 5 million to cotton ginners for remodelling and updating their ginning machines, sources told Business Recorder. According to sources, the cotton ginning system is far behind the internationally recognised standards.
"There are no standard gin stands and related components for ginning and, as a matter of fact, no research or development has been carried out in this important field", sources emphasised.
They said that most cotton ginners of Pakistan lack special initiative to produce clean cotton, and due to the prevailing cotton marketing system that does not assure them any premium for the extra efforts required for producing clean and contamination-free cotton.
"The State Bank of Pakistan has recently allowed a loan up to Rs 5 million to cotton ginners for remodelling the ginning machines but the ginners seem to be reluctant to avail this loan due to high interest rate", sources said. They said that in the backdrop of this situation, the working group has suggested some measures to improve the efficiency as well as the working of cotton ginning units.
Lint cleaners are installed in a number of factories, but these are bypassed to avoid loss of weight of ginned cotton, whereas for producing clean cotton the use of lint cleaners is desirable.
The ginners have been producing bales of varying densities mainly due to variations in the dimensions of the bale press. These need to be adjusted to produce bales of prescribed size and weight. In this respect, average bale weight is required to be maintained at 170 kg with permissible variation of 3 percent.
The ginners should use iron strips for packing the bales. Moreover, instead of sharpening or re-sharpening of gin saws, these should be replaced with new ones after ginning the prescribed number of bales. To encourage the growers to bring contamination-free seed-cotton with recommended moisture content, the ginners should announce premium on such deliveries. A ginning research institute should also be established in the country.
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