MULTAN, Jan 30: The Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA) has criticized the Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) for destabilizing the cotton market.

In his press statement, PCGA chairman Sheikh Muhammad Saeed said the government had advanced a creditline of Rs10 billion to the corporation to procure one million cotton bales. He said the creditline was given to the TCP to maintain a certain level of prices for the benefit of all cotton market stakeholders.

But the TCP, he said, had procured only 115,000 cotton bales, that too, till the fag-end of the cotton season 2001-2002. As a result, only the textile millers had left in the market which had created a sort of ‘buyer’s monopoly’. “The APTMA has created a cartel, forcing the ginners to dispose of their stocks at throwaway prices,” he said.

Ginners and growers had been trapped in a financial crisis owing to the sluggish cotton market manipulated by spinners in league with the TCP, he said.

He feared the ginners might not be able to pay their dues viz-a-viz banes and growers in the wake of huge unsold stocks lying with ginneries.

He urged the government to direct TCP to enter the market as a an active buyer and accomplish the task entrusted to it.

Spinners should also do active buying along with TCP to lift the unsold stocks of over two million bales at the earliest, he said.

He warned if the TCP and millers did not start brisk buying, the ginners would close down their factories and stop buying phutti (seed cotton).