RAHIM YAR KHAN –The Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association has said that due to lesser exports of Indian seed cotton to China for 2012 than the last year’s, India will try to sell her cotton stocks to other countries on lower prices thereby affecting Pakistani exports of the agri product.
Former Executive Member Ihsanul Haq explained that the Indian government had announced support price of seed cotton or phutti for the year 2012-13. The Indian Committee for Economic Affairs has announced that the support price for long staple seed cotton will be Rs1,560 (PKR 2,575) per 40 kg and for medium staple seed cotton will be Rs1,440 (PKR 2,375) per 40 kg, which is 18.18% and 28.17% above the support prices of last year 2011-12 respectively.
However, he regretted, for the last two years, the Pakistani government has not announced support price for cotton which is discouraging for cotton growers. He demanded that the prime minister of Pakistan should ask the Trading Corporation of Pakistan to come out as alternative buyer of cotton to save the farmers in case prices go downwards.
According to sources, the production target of current year cotton was 34.3 million bales that are nearly 6% lower that the last year’s. Whereas apprehensions have been shown that, this year, Indian cotton exports will be more than 50% lesser due to lack of interest shown by Chinese buyers.
The last year’s Indian cotton exports were 13 million bales, highest in Indian history.