LAHORE , April 4, 2023: With ‘lowest’ output in the last four decades, the country has produced 34 per cent less cotton in the crop year 2022-23 as compared with the crop yield last season.
Flash floods and heavy rains during last year’s monsoon that devastated large swathes of the agricultural land in the country, particularly in Sindh and Balochistan provinces, appeared to be prime causes of massive drop in cotton arrival.
Data gathered by Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA) shows that Pakistan produced 4,912,069 bales of cotton against 7,441,833 in the 2021-22 season, a year-on-year decline of 2,528,764 bales or 34pc loss.
The less output will eventually push the textile industry to import around 10 million bales. Mill consumption in the year 2022-23 has also been reported at 8.8m bales, the lowest in over 20 years, mainly because of severe import financing issues.
There are reports that the textile mills have so far inked import agreements for 5.5m bales, whereas they have purchased 4,605,449 bales from the local market. Last year, the mills had bought 7,332,000 bales from the domestic market.
According to ginners, they are still holding 301,720 bales in their stocks against last year’s inventory of 93,833 bales.
Interestingly, despite a strong demand in international markets, only 4,900 bales of white lint could be exported this year against the previous year’s figure of 11,000 bales, a fall of over 69pc.
Province-wise, Punjab registered over 32pc year-on-year decline in output as it produced 3,033,050 bales this season against 3,928,690 bales last season.
Sindh reported over 46pc year-on-year loss in yield as the lint production in the province this year stood at 1,879,019 bales against 3,513,143 bales last year.
Pakistan’s cotton output reached a high of 14.1m bales in the year 2004-05. But it dropped to 7m bales in 2020-21 and about 9.45m bales in 2021-22 as the country’s per acre yield contracted to half of the crop productivity in other countries of the region.
The Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) has recently expressed concern over the continuous decline in cotton production and acreage over the years and approved Rs8,500 per 40kg as the intervention price on a summary submitted by the Ministry of National Food Security and Research to attract growers towards the crop.