Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA) Senior Vice Chairman Suhail Mehmood Haral on Wednesday has asked the government to ban the import of cotton till the current unsold stock has been disposed of.
Currently, a surplus of 265,597 bales of cotton is reported to be available in the country and if not sold, local cotton growers and ginning factories survival would be jeopardized.
The association’s senior vice chairman, along with other members, while talking to the media in Multan stated that the government should waive general sales tax and other levies from farm inputs instead of granting subsidies to cut the cost of production. Moreover the industry should be supported by announcing price support for raw cotton and the electricity should be made available to the agricultural sector at Rs 5/ unit.
PCGA is mustering farmers to grow more cotton in order to bring it to a level of 20m bales of 170kg each. However, there is a need for farmers to disburse adequate funds for research work to allow advancement of the sector as a whole.
The association claimed that currently 98pc of the funds in research institutes and centres were being utilized to pay staff salaries with a mere 2 pc being contributed towards research work.
According to the PCGA’s 14th and final fortnightly report, 10.727m bales of cotton have been processed so far. Punjab Ginning factories acknowledged arrival of 6.94m bales, an increase of 15.62pc. Meanwhile, ginning units in Sindh recorded arrival of 3.78m bales whereas last year the province had received 3.76m bales.
The total volume of cotton sold has been 10.46m bales with the remaining 265,597 bales remaining unsold.
