Punjab’s cotton yield tanks, matches Sindh’s despite larger cultivation

LAHORE Punjab’s contribution to the national cotton output has seen a dramatic decline, with the province’s production now barely matching that of Sindh, despite its traditionally larger cultivation area, industry data showed on Wednesday.

An industry official said the province's cotton output share has shrunk significantly, thanks to the inability of authorities to ensure a due return to growers coupled with rampant problems of low-quality seed, fake pesticides, and costly inputs.

Punjab, the biggest agrarian economy of the country, used to produce two to three times more cotton than Sindh's output. On average, the share of Punjab in national cotton production has been three-fourths, but in the season concluded on March 31, 2024, the share of the province was hardly equal to Sindh’s production, which is sown on a far lesser area.

According to the final tally of seed cotton (phutti) arrivals at the ginning stage during the 2023-24 season, which was released on Wednesday, as of March 31, 2024, ginning factories in the Punjab province recorded the arrival of 4.281 million bales, as compared to 4.114 million bales registered in the Sindh province during the same period.

Farmers expressed indignation over the government’s failure to procure cotton at the set price of Rs8,500 per maund. The announcement of the government to buy cotton from growers through the Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) proved to be illusory. Owing to the inability of the government to support the cotton price in the market, farmers have had to face huge losses.

The latest report from the Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA) indicates that ginning factories in the country have received seed cotton equivalent to more than 8.396 million bales. This marks a 72 percent increase in arrivals compared to the same period in 2023 when the standing crop was significantly damaged due to record floods and rains.

The 2023-24 season saw a significant decline in cotton production compared with the official target. According to the data from the PCGA, ginning factories received 8.39 million bales, well below the revised target of 11.5 million bales set by the Federal Committee on Agriculture (FCA). Despite an increase of about 3.3 million bales compared to the previous year, the current production still fell short of the revised target by a big margin.

The failure has been largely attributed to Punjab's poor performance in cotton harvesting this season, with arrivals at ginning factories in the province reaching only 4.28 million bales by March 31, 2024, falling short by nearly 50 percent of the official target of 8.2 million bales for the province.

Based on the data from the ginners, it is noteworthy that Sindh's cotton production has surged to 4.11 million bales by the said period, marking over a 100 percent increase compared to the previous year's production, which was severely impacted by floods. Meanwhile, Punjab's production has increased by more than one-third from the previous year's level.

As of March 31, textile mills had procured 8.44 million bales of cotton from ginning factories, while exporters had purchased 0.292 million bales.

The low domestic cotton production has put an additional financial burden on the foreign exchange and local textile mills' operations due to greater imports. It is estimated that about 3.5 to four million bales of cotton are being imported to fulfill the demand of the textile sector.

According to the breakup of PCGA data, Khanewal in Punjab produced 0.217 million bales, Dera Ghazi Khan 0.371 million bales, Layyah 0.234 million bales, Vehari 0.219 million bales, Sahiwal 0.201 million bales, Rahim Yar Khan 0.621 million bales, Bahawalpur 0.574 million bales, and Bahawalnagar 1.166 million bales.

In Sindh, Hyderabad's production stood at 0.230 million bales, Mirpur Khas 0.135 million bales, Sanghar 1.695 million bales, Nawabshah 0.178 million bales, Naushero Feroze 0.322 million bales, Khairpur 0.358 million bales, Ghotki 0.277 million bales, Sukkur 0.549 million bales, and Dadu 0.106 million bales during the period in review. On the other hand, Baluchistan reported a production of 0.187 million bales.