LAHORE: Cotton seed companies allege that unre­gistered players in the market are selling unprocessed and spurious seed in Sindh and coupled with other factors this is damaging crop yield in the province.

“Almost 80 per cent of cotton seed requirements of Sindh are being met by mostly unregistered companies, which collect rapeseed from ginning factories in Punjab and sell it in Sindh without processing leading to irreparable loss to the growers,” Matiari Seed Company chairman Nadeem Shah told the participants of a meeting held in Karachi for the revival of cotton crop in the province.

The meeting was arra­nged by the Karachi Cotton Brokers Forum and Brokers Advisory Comm­ittee of the Karachi Cotton Association with KCA chairman Atif Dada in the chair. It was attended by proprietors of known cotton seed companies and growers.

Mr Shah said: “I’m not objecting to Punjab-regist­ered companies, though the 1976 Seed Act prohibits the company registered in one province to do seed business in the other. I desire that the unregister­ed players must be barred from entering the market.”

He said that only those companies should be allo­wed to enter the Sindh cotton seed market if they prepare their seed in the province.

The meeting also discussed other cotton crop issues, including announcing intervention prices before the sowing of the crop and making a substantial increase in the intervention rate keeping in view the hike in the farm input rates.

Atif Dada said that the association also desired the revival of the cotton crop and resolving seed and other issues being faced by the white lint growers.

Published in Dawn, February 10th, 2023