The government should chalk out a strategy for producing good quality cotton and increasing cotton crop yield, Chariman of Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA) Amanullah Qureshi said on Thursday. Talking to reporters here, he said that Dera Ghazi Khan division was producing the best quality cotton in the world and there is a great demand for cotton grown in Jatoi, Shehr Sultan, Muzaffargarh, Shadan Lund, Rajanpur, Dera Ghazi Khan and Layyah in the international market.
Highlighting the extra long fibre of the cotton grown in Dera Ghazi Khan division, he said that Pakistan could earn as much as Rs 70-75 billion per annum by exporting two to three million bales of prime quality cotton. The PCGA chairman claimed that this variety was better than Indian cotton type called 'Shakar'.
Urging the Punjab government to alert its agricultural department and its field staff to train farmers about sowing, picking, storage, transportation and ginning cotton, enabling them to produce contamination-free cotton. He also urged the provincial and federal governments to provide funds for exporting good quality cotton to earn maximum amount of foreign exchange and said that investors should be allowed duty-free import of modern ginning machinery.
Stressing the need for implementing PCGA's proposals for modernising the ginning sector, he said that if it was done, the country's earnings could increase by as much as $3 billion. Amanullah Qureshi criticised the provincial government for allocating just Rs 4 billion for the agriculture sector in the provincial budget and said that the farming sector provided jobs to 62 percent of the province's population, earning more than Rs 255 billion from cotton alone.
Criticising the provincial government for allocating what he termed a paltry sum of Rs 10 billion for the energy sector, he said that it should allocate Rs 4 billion for each division of the province to ensure food security in the country. The government, he said, should not allow the setting up of sugar mills in cotton growing areas, adding that some influential people were "granting permissions/ licences for (setting up) sugar mills in the cotton zone, in violation of rules and regulations".