ISLAMABAD: The government on Wednesday assessed that this year Pakistan will harvest 12.22 million bales of cotton with 9.75 millions bales from Punjab and 2.4 million bales from Sindh, an official source told The News.

He added that the Cotton Crop Assessment Committee (CCAC), meeting with Secretary Ministry of Textile Industry Shahid Rashid in chair, finalised this assessment.

“We had been expecting 15 million bales of cotton, but due to heavy rains and floods which affected three-fourths of Sindh, cotton output is likely to fall below that earlier estimate.”

The participants noted that Khyber Pakhtoonkhawa is emerging as a major cotton growing region as a substantial increase in the cotton growing area in Dera Ismail Khan and Tank has been reported. Cotton has also been planted on 100 acres of land in District Sawabi this year. They expected further increase in cotton cultivation in the province after the completion of Gomal Zam project, which would irrigate 163,000 acres of land.

The KP government representative asked All Pakistan Textiles Mills Association (APTMA) to provide incentives to the poor growers in the province for enhancing cotton production.

A representative of APTMA said that textile mills were ready to provide free of cost seeds to the growers of that area. “The crop was good; the incidence of cotton leaf curl virus (CLCV) disease and pest attack was low compared with previous year, but rains and floods in Sindh damaged more than 75 percent of cotton of the province. Consistent rains in Punjab resulted in shedding of flowers and immature fruiting bodies on an area of about 12,000 hectares.”

Representatives of provincial governments, farmers, Karachi Cotton Association, Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association, Trading Corporation of Pakistan, also attended the meeting. Cotton crop was sowed on an area of 0.65 million hectares in Sindh and 2.5 million hectares in Punjab.

The cotton sowing in Punjab was 12.25 percent higher than the target. Sindh recorded a marginal increase of 0.67 percent.

A representative of farmers complained about poor seed quality in terms of germination.

The chairman requested all stakeholders to look into the matter and take it very seriously. The secretary asked the PCGA to standardise the weight of bales according to international standards.

The committee also decided to review these estimates of production on November 23 in its next meeting.