LAHORE: Former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has described the looming cotton crisis as a wake-up call and urged the prime minister to take concrete action to boost exports and hold those responsible for the decline in cotton output to account.
In a statement from Kot Lakhpat jail, shared through his counsel Rana Mudassar Umer on Saturday, the incarcerated leader stated that 55 per cent of the country’s export earnings were generated by the textile industry.
Mr Qureshi, a grower and former president of the Farmers Association of Pakistan, stated that there was a stock of just 1,000 cotton bales at the start of the cotton season and a few years back, Pakistan was a lint exporting country.
He said Pakistan had an inherent advantage over India because its cotton was grown in the irrigated belt of Punjab and Sindh, whereas Indian cotton came mostly from its rain-fed areas. Our yield per acre used to be higher than what an Indian acre produced.
According to him, why have farmers shifted to other more lucrative crops is a question worth pondering. Who permitted and promoted the policy of establishing sugar mills in the cotton belt of Punjab and Sindh needs to be looked into. “If one looks at the list of sugar mill owners in Punjab and Sindh, one can easily identify the brains behind the policy of allowing installation of sugar mills in the cotton belt of Pakistan.”
He said India was planning to produce 50 million bales of cotton by 2031, whereas Pakistan’s cotton production had gone down by almost 50 per cent in the last decade.
He said India had developed high-yielding, climate resistant pest resistant varieties and was today a major exporter of cotton yarn to China.
“What have our research stations produced and who will hold them accountable? Just one district of Punjab, former Multan division, comprising Multan, Vehari, Lodhran and Khanewal, produced more cotton than the whole of the Sindh province. These districts have shifted to other crops because we failed to provide high yielding, pest resistant, quality seeds to the farmers.
We failed to ensure that the farmer got unadulterated pesticides,” he said and added Dera Ismail Khan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and many districts in Balochistan could produce quality cotton, but no interest was shown in developing these districts for cotton production.
Published in Dawn, May 18th, 2026
