LAHORE: Pakistan's cotton sowing area is continuously decreasing for the last three years, which reflects loss of growers' interest in this crop due to declining profitability.
Currently Pakistan's sowing areas are expected to reduce from 2.4 million hectares to 2.3 million hectares last year, much less than what we used to sow few years ago.
"Not only has our sowing area declined but our production per acre has also declined," said Farmers Bureau of Pakistan (FBP) President Dr. Zafar Hayyat while talking to Business Recorder here on Saturday.
Government and private sectors (national and multinational industries) have failed badly in providing standard and good quality seeds to the farmer. National companies have taken the advantage of loose regulation imposed by the government sector and multinationals have been exploiting the government to get extra protection for operating in the open market, instead of competing with the others, expecting to become the blue-eyed of the government sector.
Pakistan should speed up its effort to develop the good quality research by selecting the best scientists and facilitating in the form of monetary term as well as resources. The same scientists are picked up by the multinationals where they instead of working for the government put their best inputs to such countries.
Farmers Bureau of Pakistan (FBP) demand that Pakistan government facility for cotton research should be revamped on priority basis and very good and strict regulatory structures should be made to check their progress involving private and government sectors and their perks and incentives should be based on their work. All political influence should be withdrawn and private sector whether multinational or the national should behave to compete without any protection, he added.
"We can revive our cotton industry within no time provided we work sincerely right away and make sure that all the technocrats who misinform and try to produce wrong reports to justify the performance should know that they will be strictly held accountable for any discrepancy if and when found," observed Dr. Zafar Hayyat.
"Farmers, ginners and textile mill owners will be facing difficult times. If they do no act collectively the industry in Pakistan would be history. If we don't become innovative we all know what drastic situation we would face in the textile sector," he said.
He said it was time the farmers, the ginners, the textile mill owners and the government worked together to finalize a policy on an emergency basis, involving true leaders of their sectors.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020
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