MULTAN City News

‘1.6m cotton bales still unsold with ginners’
From Our Correspondent
MULTAN: The Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA) fortnightly report shows that the Trading Corporation of Pakistan has purchased only 94,900 cotton bales while 14,250,972 cotton bales were sourced to the country’s ginners by Jan 15, which showed 10.62 per cent increase than the last year.
Talking to journalists here on Monday, PCGA chairman Hafeez Anwar informed them about seed-cotton arrival, sale and unsold stock of cotton in Punjab and Sindh. He said that 12,055,555 cotton bales were sold to the textile units while the TCP procured 94,900 bales and exporters bought 420,214 bales. Thus, overall 12,570,669 bales were traded so far, he informed. He said that the PCGA was following the production target of the Pakistan Central Cotton Committee. Hafeez Anwar said that total 492,355 in Punjab and 192 in Sindh, out of 1,200 ginning factories, were operational in the provinces. The PCGA chairman said that the Punjab contributed 10,340,010 bales, which was 12.85 per cent more than the last year when Punjab had contributed 9,162,783 bales. He said that the Sindh contributed 3,910,962 bales, which was 5.13 per cent more than the last year when it contributed 3,720,180 bales while Balochistan had contributed 76,150 bales. After total trading of 12,570,669 bales, there were 1,680,303 bales available with ginners as unsold stock. According to district wise cotton arrival statistics, he added, Multan received 484,803 bales, which were 1.80 per cent more than the last year while Lodhran received 349,135 bales with 0.22pc decrease, Khanewal received 947,754 bales with 4.27pc increase, Muzaffargarh received 483,532 bales with 20.43pc increase, Dera Ghazi Khan received 490,064 bales with shows increase of 24.96pc, Rajanpur received 565,893 bales with 37.54pc increase, Layyah received 386,525 bales with 40.09pc more than the last year, Vehari received 773,573 bales with a decrease of 8.82pc, Sahiwal received 571,282 bales with 11.94pc increase, Pakpattan received 172,487 bales with 0.77pc increase and Kasur received 22,400 bales with 21.09pc decrease than the last year. He said that the Sindh province district wise break up of cotton arrival shows that Hyderabad had received 265,060 bales, Mirpur Khas 400,038 bales, Sangarh 1,492,122 bales, Nawabshah 312,896 bales, Khairpur 249,802 bales, Ghotki 217,182 bales, Sukkur 398,532 bales, Jamshoro 144,700 bales while Balochistan received 76,150 bales with 19.34 increase than the last year. He added that ginneries received 292,525 bales from Jan 1 to Jan 15, 2015, while unsold stock was 1,680,303 bales.