ISLAMABAD, Jan 5: Textile Industry Minister Mushtaq Ali Cheema said on Thursday that the government had projected a target of 10-15 per cent contamination-free cotton to be achieved during the current cotton season.

Talking to Dawn, the minister attributed this projection for the first year of the implementation of the contamination-free cotton programme to shortage of resources and trained manpower. “During the next three to four years, the government will try to achieve maximum contamination-free cotton,” Mr Cheema maintained.

Elaborating further, the minister pointed out that the government had allocated Rs25 million to support growers and ginners for achieving the initial year’s target of clean cotton. Under the policy, he said the government had decided to give Rs50 per maund as support to the growers and Rs30 per maund to the ginners on producing contamination-free cotton.

Mr Cheema said that a committee had been constituted for this purpose. The committee includes representatives of provincial agriculture departments, the Trading Corporation of Pakistan and the cotton commissioner to evaluate the standard of cotton for the support programme.

Moreover, he said that this year only 31 ginning factories out of 800 were selected for the clean cotton programme. These numbers would be enhanced in the years to come, he added. Answering a question, he said that amounts would be distributed among the growers through their respective ginning factories in the first phase of the programme.

The minister said that this year the arrivals of cotton in the market would be late owing to a delay in the sowing period. He admitted that this year the production of cotton would remain short against the last year production. However, he said that it would be according to the required needs.

In reply to a query, Mr Cheema said that every year exporters imported long staple or contamination-free cotton which was not produced locally. He said that this year the long staple cotton would also be imported to meet the requirement of the textile industry.

Answering a question, the minister said the abolishing of export subsidies on cotton would have a very limited impact on the cotton price. He said that in case of complete abolishing of the domestic support on cotton, the growers would get benefits out of it by getting higher price for the produce.

The minister said that non-cotton producing countries having preferential market access in major markets were currently importing cotton at cheaper prices, thus making textile products of cotton producing countries less competitive.

Answering another question, the minister said that Pakistan would increase export of apparel and textile products to the United States following a three per cent restriction on products of the least developed countries decided in the recently held Hong Kong ministerial conference.