Negotiations between Punjab Board of Investment and Trade (PBIT) and Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA) proved fruitful on the issues to ensure the supply of certified cotton-seed, modernisation of Ginning industry, clean cotton, increase in production and achieving the goal of energy efficiency.
PBIT’s Director (Agriculture and livestock) Dr Suhail Saleem and PCGA’s Chairman Mukhtar Ahmed Baloch, Vice Chairman Aasim Saeed Sheikh and CEC member Mudassar Hussain took part in the dialogues. PBIT director assured them that PCGA’s proposals and recommendations would be encouraged and the board would play its role to remove the reservations of Multi-National Companies regarding supply of qualitative seed and it would also play a role of bridge between the growers and seed supplying companies and growers would be educated about the pre-ginning process includes drying of seed cotton and cleaning it for removing such impurities like immature bolls, sticks, bracts and other vegetable material or bark, leaf, pepper trash, grass, hulls, seed coat fragments and motes left behind in the lint. If the cotton seeds, pre-cleaned of these impurities right on the farm, go to ginning plants the actual ginning to be undertaken there would become smooth. The Board would cooperate in financing to modernise the ginning industry, investment in capacity enhancement of ginneries and import of machinery of modern technology. The Board also help in improving the quality of cotton and preparation of clean cotton and it would educate the growers as well as ginners through training workshops, seminars and training courses where the experts would deliver their lectures.
PCGA Chairman Mukhtar Ahmed Baloch said Growers were incurring huge financial losses at the hands of Seed Mafia which was supplying substandard, uncertified and less germinated seed to the growers. This mafia was also weakening the Pakistan’s economy. Pakistan will not be able to achieve next cotton crop target in 2014-15 unless production of quality seeds, supply of quality inputs and adequate water availability is assured, said Baloch. Increasing the efficiency of cotton ginning mills is of immense importance for getting higher profits, and, in turn, benefiting the growers. This can also spare textile millers from paying premiums for better-ginned cotton. “This is an area where there is a lot of room for research and out-of-the box thinking and technology innovation,” says Chairman of PCGA. Vice Chairman Aasim Saeed Sheikh stressed the need for legislation against seed mafia, adulterators and supplier of sub-standard inputs to award them exemplary punishment. He said PCGA is playing its role in up-grading the system, Energy efficiency, quality and clean cotton.
