Cotton sowing held back as support price delays

KARACHI: Growers on Saturday pressed the government to announce support price for cotton as farmers were seen switching to other crops amid delayed rate announcement and that reflected in slow sowing of the industrial input this year.

The growers demanded of the government to fix support price of cotton as soon as possible. Otherwise, cotton production would suffer in the country, they said. “By this time, nearly 50 percent of sowing is used to complete but now it is around 15 to 20 percent only and chillies are being preferred over cotton,” a grower from Sindh said.

However, cotton sowing is going satisfactory in Sanghar, largest cotton growing district of Sindh province, because of availability of water. In lower Sindh, sowing is being affected due to unavailability of quality seeds.

Punjab’s provincial minister for agriculture recently formed a task force to deal with complaints of growers in four divisions: Multan, Dera Ghazi Khan, Sahiwal and Bahawalpur. The task force would record cotton sowing in every district. Growers and dealers would be in contact to ensure supply of genuine seed and pesticides. Current cotton seeds have 50 percent germination and it would require 10 kilograms of seed for one acre compared to five kg seeds in the past.

Cotton production already fell 20.3 percent to 8.6 million bales till March 1 this season as compared to 10.7 million bales in the same period last year.

Meanwhile, ginners urged the central bank to exempt them from interest rate payment on unsold cotton bales from January to June as they said commodity trade rock bottomed amid one-month long lockdown.

Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association said ginners should be exempted from paying loan mark-ups as they have massive unsold stocks of cotton bales.

Cotton trade in the local market remained almost zero for one month now. “If any scattered deal was done, it was usually done on credit and had not been recorded in the cotton market,” said a stakeholder.

Ginners find themselves unable to pay dues to cotton growers, who would feel difficulty in sowing of the new crop amid unavailability of funds.

Karachi Cotton Brokers Forum Chairman Naseem Usman said international cotton market remained stable during the week. New York Cotton Market futures remained stable around 52 to 53 cents per pound. Cotton prices also remained stable in China while rates increased in India. Karachi Cotton Association kept the spot rate fixed at Rs8,800 per maund.

Stakeholders said recent interest rate reduction would have positive impact over textile industry in the long term.