LAHORE: An enormous growth of 81 per cent has been recorded in the arrival of cotton at ginning factories, the Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA) said on Monday.

According to the PCGA data, over 6.25 million bales arrived at the factories by Nov 1 against more than 3.45m on the same date last year — a difference of 2.8m bales on a year-on-year basis.

Sindh reported a 93pc increase — 3.321m bales against 1.724m, and Punjab showed 70pc increase — 2.935m bales against 1.728m by Nov 1 last year.

Experts believe that Pakistan will produce 8.5m cotton bales this season against an estimate of 9.3m by the Cotton Crop Assessment Committee, says Cotton Brokers Forum chairman Naseem Usman. The cotton arriving in the market these days is, however, of poor quality, he remarks.

He says if the total national cotton production is taken as 8.5m bales, the local textile industry will have to import 7m bales to meet its requirement of over 15m, whereas it has so far signed import agreements for 4m bales, as prices of the white lint are hitting new peaks in the local as well as world markets.

Cotton rates in the local market are hovering around Rs16,000 per maund, while they have reached 116.85 cents per pound in New York.

According to the statistics issued by the PCGA, the arrival of cotton by the same day in 2019 was 6m bales, in 2018 the figure stood at 7.7m and in 2017 at 8.1m bales.

Pakistan has produced 5.645m cotton bales in the 2020-21 season — around 2.9m less than the yield of 8.5m bales in the year 2019-20.

Published in Dawn, November 4th, 2021