May 5, 2002	Sunday	Safar 21, 1423

KARACHI, May 4: Federal Minister for Commerce Abdul Razak Dawood on Saturday said that the government would soon promulgate the Cotton Standardization Ordinance to ensure contamination-free and clean cotton production.

Speaking at a seminar on ‘Cotton Production, Quality Improvement and Hedge Trading,’ jointly organized by APTMA and KCA, the minister stressed upon the need for putting all out efforts to produce contamination-free cotton.

The government last year, he said, initiated work on promoting contamination-free cotton by declaring district Rahimyar Khan in Punjab and Ghotki in Sindh as pilot project for achieving this goal.

The minister said in Punjab good results have been achieved as the provincial government took a lead in bringing about a required change in the law for ensuring production of clean cotton. He further said the Punjab government took aggressive posture for achieving the results.

As a result of this, Razak said, the contamination ratio has come down from 25 grams per bale to 5-6 grams per bale, but the government is endeavouring to bring it further down to 2.5 grams per bale. He said from next cotton season two new districts, Bhawalpur (Punjab) and Sanghar (Sindh) will be included in this project.

However, he was not satisfied with the performance of Sindh government and said this resulted in getting lesser degree of success in promoting taint-free cotton production.

In order to get better quality seed, he said, restriction will be imposed on the movement of cotton from one district to another from next season.

The minister disclosed that highly encouraging results have been achieved in Balochistan where quality cotton is being produced and the government is going to bring four more districts under cotton cultivation from new crop season. He further said that a modern ginning factory would be set-up in Balochistan for producing clean and high quality cotton.

After achieving these results, he said the country is in a position to claim for being a clean cotton producer and the TCP has already exported around 15,000 contamination-free bales which proves that we have a place in the world market for marketing clean cotton.

Nevertheless, the minister was highly critical about the role of ginning factories and said they are the weakest link in the entire cotton economy and suggested that due to over-capacity some of the units have to close down.

He urged upon the All Pakistan Cotton Ginners’ Association (PCGA) to play its role in achieving clean cotton production and said the association should ask its members to introduce new technology and machinery and only then good quality cotton could be produced.

It is still a long way to go, the minister admitted in achieving clean cotton and disclosed that the government is going to introduce ordinance in this regard to stop use of jute and polypropylene bags for carrying phutti (seed-cotton