Multan— The Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA) has expressed hope that cotton consumption in Pakistan would increase to 13 million as the European Union's waiver of 75 exportable items of Pakistan has enhanced cotton consumption of mills and spinners by 2 million bales to 13 million bales, against 11 million bales per season, due to increase in export orders for cloth and yarn.
PCGA Chairman Amanullah Qureshi said that prices of cotton would now increase to Rs 6500 to Rs 7000 per maund in local market because international market was also going up. He was optimistic that now growers, as well as ginners, could get fair return of their produce. He said that now textile millers would have to break their cartel for their survival.
“In view of the decision of WTO regulation Council for Trade in Goods (CTG), which allowed PakistanΆs access to European Union (EU) countries for its more than 70 exportable items on Generalised System of Preference (GSP) facility, the value-added textile products and raw cotton will get maximum benefit. The EU countries are Pakistan's largest trading partners, as the country's exports stand more than 30 percent of its total export with a tune of over 3 billion pounds,” Qureshi maintained.
Mainly, Pakistan exports textiles, which is over 70 percent of the total volume to EU countries besides leather products, which account for 13 percent of the total countryΆs exports. The share of Pakistan exports to EU countries import stands at around 27 percent of their total imports. Pakistan will get benefit from access to the market of the EU, which allows exports to more than 3,000 tariff lines duty-free, besides enjoy reduced duties on another 3,000 tariff lines. Exports from Pakistan are currently worth around 3.5 billion euros each year, 921 million euros of which comes from these 75 lines. Till February 1, 2012 the country received 13.5 million bales with almost four months left for the termination of crop year 2011-12.
PakistanΆs main importing countries include Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Cambodia and China. He said eight months till February 1, 2012 the textile sector purchased around 1.10 million bales while total stocks left stood at 2.1 million bales in the country.
According to the International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC) global cotton trade is projected up by 6.5 percent to 8.58 million tons in 2011-12, fuelled by larger production and consumption, Qureshi added. He said the export market was open to every stakeholder and a total of 700,000 bales have already been exported till date.
