Country may miss cotton production target by 2.25 million bales

Pakistan may miss the cotton production target by about 2.25 million bales due to devastation caused by the floods. At present, production of 11.75 million cotton bales is expected against the set target of 14 million bales for the year 2010/11, officials at Ministry of Food and Agriculture said. Cotton was sown on 3.199 million hectares, out of which cultivated area of 0.588 million hectares has been damaged.
According to the Ministry for Food and Agriculture estimates, the floods have caused huge losses to Pakistan agriculture economy and have swept away cotton crop on 0.588 million acres across the county. The worst hit cotton growing areas are districts Layya, Rajanpur, D G Khan, Bhakkar and Muzafargarah in Punjab, and Mirpur Khas, Matyari, Sukkur, Khairpur and Hyderabad districts in Sindh.
Officials said that the floods may result in overall agricultural losses of nearly $3 billion, given that the floods have damaged Pakistan''s main crop producing regions in Punjab and Sindh. Pakistan''s textile sector, which accounts for 60 percent of the country''s exports, is likely to be hit hard due to damage to the cotton crop, which could be 20 percent below normal, officials added.
According to officials in Minfa during 2010/11 Pakistani textile sector will be facing acute shortage of the commodity and it will have to import about 2 to 3 million bales of cotton. They said that farm production of Pakistan, which is Asia''s third largest grower of wheat and the fourth biggest producer of cotton, may decline by 20 to 30 percent because of this damage.
"Large fields of cotton in Layya, Bhakkar, D G Khan and Rajanpur districts of Punjab have been washed away by the floods," said Ibrahim Mughal, Chairman of AgriForum Pakistan. "We will be short by about three million bales, which will burden our already fragile economy by at least one billion dollars," he added. He said that the government had set cotton production target for the Kharif season 2010-11 at 14 million bales, but cotton production will remain around 11 to 11.5 million bales.