KARACHI, Jan 29: All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (Aptma) chairman Nadeem Maqbool on Tuesday urged the government to desist from any interference in the cotton market and let the free market prevail.

In a statement issued here, Aptma chief said the recent spate of appeals from the ginners related to ginned cotton did not merit any intervention from the TCP.

Nadeem Maqbool said the stock position of ginners being on the higher side and the allegation that mills were not buying deliberately had no merit.

While agreeing that mill buying is on the decrease as compared to the last year, this is, he said, the result of the recession in the US and other world economies following the Sept 11 incident.

The country’s textile industry has come of the age and products developed by the industry in recent years, he said, required certain mandatory imports in respect of contamination-free cotton and the extra-long staple cotton from the US and Egypt.

Consequently, graduating to a higher value-added position is one of the basic tenets of the ‘Textile Vision 2005’ and to use this as a mean to hide incorrect business positions by the ginners will be disastrous for the industry, he added.

Aptma chairman said the government this year had followed a policy of limited intervention to support the farmers in attaining the minimum support price for phutti.

In any event, he said, the policy objective of the government to support growers had been met and the majority of farmers had obtained the desired returns on their produce.

In case of any grower still carry stocks of phutti, he said, this number was limited to the larger ones, who had evidently speculated.