ABDUL RASHEED AZAD

ISLAMABAD (October 13, 2010) : Pakistan will be forced to import over 3 million bales of raw cotton to meet the demands of local textile industry as cotton production will remain around 11.5 million bales against set target of 14 million bales in crop season 2010-11.

Officials at the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MinFA) told Business Recorder that during the current crop season Pakistan expected to achieve the set target due to favourable conditions, but devastating floods have swept away cotton crop on 600,000 hectares.

Before the recent floods Pakistan was expecting a bumper crop of 14 million bales compared to 12.8 million bales produced last year. Officials said that Pakistan's textile industry annually requires around 14 million bales of cotton, officials added.

The estimated loss to the cotton crop in recent flash floods in cotton growing areas of Punjab and Sindh stands at over Rs 120 billion. "The cotton crop in terms of value faced more than 30 percent loss to major crops in the recent devastating floods, therefore, local cotton industry would be forced to import over 3 million bales of cotton, which would cost Pakistan over Rs 120 billions ($1.395 billion)" officials said.

Officials said cotton crop had been sown on 3.4 million hectares, out of which 0.6 million hectares had been destroyed and the country lost about 2.5 million bales. Officials warned that the country would face serious shortage of cotton in coming days as more than 20 percent of the cotton crop had been destroyed by the floods.

During the recent devastating floods Bakkhar, Layyah and Mianwali districts in Punjab whereas Sukkur, Khairpur, Ghotki, Naushero Feroze and Nawabshah districts in Sindh witnessed the worst damage to the cotton crop. An analysis of the Pakistani cotton industry's imports of raw cotton between 2008-09 and 2009-10 reveals that Pakistan imported 2.8 million bales and 1.98 million bales in the two years respectively. Pakistani cotton industry during last year imported an additional 150,000 metric tons of raw cotton due to curbs on yarn export.

The production of cotton in Pakistan rose from 1.1 million bales in 1947-48 to 14.265 million bales in 2004-05 and the number of textile mills jumped to about 460 in 2009-10 as against to 2 in 1947-48. But unfortunately, the production of cotton has become stagnant in the last decade to around 12.5 million bales on average (except in the year 2004-05 when Pakistan produced 14.6 million bales of cotton).

Official said that for Pakistani farmers to increase cotton production requires adoption of modern techniques of agronomy, pest management system, proper use of pesticide etc, while the government should formulate/adopt farmers' friendly policies.