LAHORE: Cotton arrivals crossed eight million bales on Dec 15, showing an increase of 63 per cent over and above the total production of the last crop year, reveals the fortnightly data released by the Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA) on Monday.

A total of 8.02 million bales of cotton had been ginned across the country by Dec 15 compared to 4.90m bales in the same period last year.

The data showed that at least 3.957m bales arrived at ginning factories in Punjab, while 4.67m bales were brought to the ginning units in Sindh, which are 30pc and 116pc more than the total production of the previous year, respectively.

During this period, textile mills have purchased over 7.866m bales and exporters 290,000 bales, while 6.5m bales are still lying with ginners.

The local cotton production has crossed the 8m-bale-mark after three years, while estimates suggest that by the end of the cotton year 2023-24, the output is likely to reach 8.5m bales, still short by 4.3m bales from the initial target set for the year.

The total lint production stood at 5.646m bales in 2020-21, 7.442m bales in 2021-22 and 4.912m bales in 2022-23, the lowest in the country’s history.

The maximum production of cotton in the history of the country was a record 14.9m bales in 2015-16. For many years before the cotton season 2019-20, white lint output in the country never dropped below the 10m mark.

Cotton Ginners Forum Chairman Ihsanul Haq says that local cotton production has been on the decline every year due to an unusual increase in the cultivation of sugarcane in the cotton zones of Sindh and Punjab and adverse weather conditions. However, this year the situation changed somewhat and the crop output is much better than the previous years.

He says that because of heavy taxes on the textile sector and a record increase in charges for electricity and other utilities around 50pc of the textile units have become non-operational because the higher production costs have rendered them uncompetitive on the world markets.

He fears that if the conditions persist, chimneys of more units will stop emitting smoke as is evident from the fact that the consumption of cotton by the textile industry this year has dropped considerably.

He regrets to point out that the caretaker government has been making claims of taking the national exports from the current $40 billion to $100bn per annum but has so far taken no practical step to materialise this claim by making all the textile mills functional through supportive policies.

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2023