LAHORE, June 13: Punjab has achieved 94 per cent of the cotton sowing target of 6.3 million acres by June 10, and hopes to exceed the same during the next seven days. A meeting of the Cotton Crop Management Group was told here on Monday. The meeting, presided over by Agriculture Minister Arshad Lodhi, noted that urea import was lagging behind schedule and might create shortage in the country. The federal government was scheduled to import 185,000 tons of urea in June, but it had not been able to keep pace. The shortage, in fact, had already started biting farmers in southern parts of the province. It asked the federal government to expedite the process of importing urea.

The meeting decided to use inventory of 2003 as benchmark, and asked local formulators to improve it by at least 10 per cent. “The government was a bit wary of the pest situation but, of late, it has grown confident with rise in temperature,” says agriculture secretary Fayyaz Bashir.

The local formulators were a little bit slow to import pesticides in the beginning thinking that the government might withdraw sales tax on pesticides in the budget. But, since it had not turned out to be case, they would now be completing their inventory, he hoped.

The agriculture minister ordered a strict action against adulterators. The pesticide dealers were given a deadline of June 15 to deal with adulteration and expiry of pesticides on their own or get ready for an administrative action. He appreciated the efforts of his department which made it possible to achieve targets of all major crops including wheat, cotton, rice, maize, grain and potato.

The meeting was informed that for the current year, the target for cotton sowing had been fixed as 6.30 million acres with the production target of 11.50 million bales. So far about 95 per cent of the cultivation target had been achieved in which 92.26 per cent had been shared by the core area including Multan, Lodhran, Vehari, Khanewal, Bahawalpur, Bahawalnager, Rahim Yar Khan, Dera Ghazi Khan, Muzaffargarh, Rajanpur and Layyah.

Similarly 66 per cent of the total sown area was contributed by marginal areas of cotton sowing including Kasur, Bhakkar, Mianwali, Sargodha, Mandi Bahauddin, Sheikhupura, Khushab, Chakwal and Jhelum.

The non-core area of cotton which includes Sahiwal, Pakpattan, Toba Tek Singh, Jhang, Faisalabad and Okara took lead and had sown 110.05 per cent of the target.