MULTAN, April 18: The Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association wants the Trading Corporation of Pakistan to immediately start procuring lint cotton in order to check "cartel the millers have made to artificially depress prices in the domestic market."

A general body meeting of the association was held here on Sunday with its chairman Seth Jaith Anand presiding over it. Ginners from all parts of the cotton growing areas of the country turned up to attend the meeting organized to discuss the situation which emerged after the piling up of unsold lint cotton stocks with the ginneries.

The PCGA general body observed that the ginners were facing the crisis of stock pileup for the third time in short span of six years. It was said that the lint cotton demand of the domestic spinning and textile industry had been projected as 11m bales (of 170kg each) while the production this year was 9.7m bales and about 0.2m bales of which had been exported. But despite the demand-supply gap, a stock of over 1m bales had been lying unsold with the ginneries at present.

The ginners claimed that they always paid the prevailing market prices to the growers while procuring phutti (seed cotton) but when it came their (ginners') turn, the millers had made a cartel owing to their status as the single-largest buyer in the domestic market and manipulated the prices in their favour.

Some of the speakers at the PCGA general body meeting suggested that the ginners should also enlist them as exporters from the next cotton season to export finer quality lint cotton in order to challenge the buyer's monopoly.

The meeting resolved that from the next season the ginners would not procure the phutti having foreign bodies, such as trash, dust, salt and water. Now there will be no compromise on the standard of phutti, the PCGA announced.