KARACHI, Jan 4: The country is poised to harvest record cotton crop this season (2004-05) as 56.31 per cent higher arrivals of phutti during last fortnight (Dec 15 to Jan 1) took cotton production over 13 million bales against last best recorded crop of 12.1 million bales in 1991-92.

Around half a million more bales made their way to ginneries during last fortnight compared to the corresponding period last year when arrivals stood at 899,516 bales. Consequently, the arrival of phutti stood at 1.367 million bales or 56.31 per cent higher over the same period last year.

Sindh and Punjab recorded higher arrival of phutti during the period under review, the former made a fabulous rise of 63.18 per cent and latter 54.62 per cent. The bumper crop would support and help local textile industry at a time when the world trade of around dollar three trillion of textiles and clothing has just (January 1, 2005) opened up under WTO's quota free regime.

This will give the local industry 10 to 12 per cent advantage on the basis of domestic raw material, which other nations engaged in textiles would not enjoy. Despite the fact that the industry had been critical of the government policy to intervene through TCP to support the price of cotton and protect growers interest but the industry still has an edge of domestic raw material.

According to Pakistan Cotton Ginners' Association (PCGA) the phutti arrivals up to January 1, 2005, in Sindh stood 63.18 per cent at 2.699 million bales as against 1.664 million bales recorded in the corresponding period last year.

In Punjab, the arrival also remained on higher side recording 54.62 per cent improvement over the same period last year. In total 10.403 million bales have arrived as against 6.728 million bales in the corresponding period last year.

The state owned Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) purchased 1.266m bales up to January 1, 2005. Last year the Corporation did not lift a single bale as the crop was short and prices remained on the higher side.

Similarly, the textile industry which is the biggest buyer and stakeholder in cotton trade along with growers purchased 9.395 million bales during this period as compared to 6.360 million bales lifted by them in the same period last year.

The private exporters also purchased sizable cotton at 393,664 bales as against 155,668 bales last year. Presently, the ginning factories are holding around 2.148 million bales of unsold stocks. Last year the unsold stocks in the same period stood at 1.876 million bales.

In total 1,020 ginning factories are operating in the country out of these 822 units are in the Punjab and 198 in Sindh. This strongly indicates that a lot of phutti was yet to come from the cotton fields of both the provinces.

After meeting domestic consumption at around 13 million bales the country will still have a sizable quantity of raw cotton to export cotton, analyst Naseem Usman said.