LAHORE, Oct 9: The Kissan Board Pakistan claimed on Thursday the shortage of pesticides at cotton maturity stage could cost the country at least one million bales.

Speaking at a press conference, KBP secretary-general Ibrahim Mughal alleged that some multinationals dealing in pesticides, backed by some policy-makers in the government, were able to manipulate market for windfall profits.

“These policy-makers have commercial interests in the pesticides business and have ruined the crop at the final stages.”

He claimed that total loss to farmers, because of pesticides shortage, could be around Rs10 billion. The government must set up an inquiry committee to fix responsibility for, what he called, cotton disaster.

Rejecting official reply on the pesticides crisis, he said that wet season did not come out of blue as forecasts were there well in time.

According to the KBP official, the present government had mishandled cash crops — average per acre yield of wheat fell this year, the government has not fixed the support price of rice, cane crushing is still an uncertainty, and now cotton crop is under a tremendous pressure.

Criticizing policy-makers, Mughal said they forecast bumper crop ignoring ground realities and in the end they blamed the weather. “This has been a pattern for the last one year but no one from the government has waken up to take note of it,” he said.

Mughal warned the government that its officials could mishandle the weedicides import for the coming rabi season.