Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA) has urged upon the Government to grant a relief and bailout package to cotton growers and convince them to bring maximum area under cotton crop to make Pakistan self-sufficient in cotton and to save more than Rs 30 to 40 billion being spent on the import of three million cotton bales.
Addressing a press conference, the PCGA Chairman Dr Jeso Mal, Ex-Chairman Shehzad Ali Khan, and group chairman Haji Muhammad Akram said that it was a very alarming situation that cotton area had fallen by 25 percent to a 31-year low current season, as farmers switch to more profitable crops and they had trimmed the cotton sowing area consequently textile millers would have to import cotton.
Even with an expected up tick in yields, the 2016-17 crop was forecast at just 9.0m bales, down from an earlier estimate of 11 million bales. They said that Cotton production in Pakistan is integral to the economic development of the country so we have launched "sow cotton save economy "Kapas Ugao Maeeshat Bachao" campaign to make the country self-sufficient in cotton and cotton exporting country. They claimed that Pakistan had a potential to produce 20 million bales of cotton. One such measure could be a government fixed minimum support price for cotton crop as is done in the case of wheat and sugarcane before the sowing season.
This can encourage the growers to sow cotton on a larger area if they find the support price satisfactory. Such a practice was in vogue until over a decade ago but was given up abruptly to move towards the free market under pressure from the textile lobby. And, in the current scenario, this is the most appropriate time to resume this practice. They said that there, the cotton is now grown on less than 200,000 hectares against 300,000 hectares six years ago. The main factor remains the price and the growers are denied the right price for their produce by the middlemen.