The crucial month of September and early October have been passed with out any damaging any major lose to cotton crop except some minor attack in sind due to rain, but yesterday it was hail storm in some part of Dera Ghazi Khan District damaging cotton crop in some areas of the district. Authorities concerned have sent initial report regarding heavy losses of the crops to the directorate Agriculture, Lahore .
some pest attack of whitefly and bollworm has been reported in some areas of Punjab but not at larger extent. The minor attacked also been seen in lower Sindh of reddening of leaf, besides these loses we are in position to get bumper crops over 12 million bales.
The weather report for coming few days is sunny and no indication of any heavy rain in cotton growing areas of Sindh and Punjab.
The Price of local cotton is declining continuously despite intervention of TCP, as I already mentioned in my previous analysis report that our price or links to international price as we are dealing on the basis of free market of mechanism, free market means free import and export without any restriction .
International price is on the decline trend because consumption is lower than the production in world, 2.5 million bales are surplus according to last world Cotton report .
The picking process in lower Sindh almost at the end as more than 90% crops has been picked. Picking in Punjab and upper Sindh is at their peak.
The Government of Pakistan is making all out efforts to stabilize the price by inducting TCP and TCP have claimed to have contract more than 2,14,000 bales out of this 6,ooo bales are delivered to TCP godown in Karachi . The question arise why ginners are so reluctant to delivered cotton to TCP, they suppose that there are many hurdles as compare to Sppiners.
The price of seed cotton is much lower than government support price i.e Rs.925 per 40 kgs, in this regard many meetings are held . The Pakistan Cotton Ginner Association has assured to government that Ginner would offer support price of seed cotton to growers if, the TCP entered into an agreement with them to buy their unsold stocks of all grades of lint cotton at fixed price
Ginning report of all cotton producing areas is on higher side as compare to last year although before the sowing of cotton there was shortage of irrigated water but due to increase of the area and by minor pest attacked , indication of bumper cotton crop is there. Our exporter of cotton get low price in international market and our cotton is quoted in B. index because of lack of quality .
Cotton is backbone of our country and 60 %to 70% of our export earned by textile and its products, therefore government should take concrete measure with satisfaction of all the stake holder of cotton by providing better price to growers, ginners and smooth availability of raw cotton to spinner at reasonable price where they may compete in international market with respect to yarn export by keeping in mind the challenges of WTO regime which is not far away.