Cotton production up 37 percent to 5.98 million bales

KARACHI: Cotton production from the current crop season rose 36.79 percent year-on-year to 5.98 million bales till October 15, industry data showed on Wednesday.

Pakistan recorded cotton arrivals of 4.37 million bales during the same period a year ago, Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA) said in a fortnightly report.  Karachi Cotton Brokers Association is expecting 12 million bales this year. 

“Half of that has reached factories,” Naseem Usman, the association’s chairman said. Government set a cotton output target of 14 million bales (of 170-kilogramme each) for the current crop year of 2017/18. 

Industry experts, however, feared that production would be less than the target due to water shortage, late sowing and inept management. Cotton could only be planted on less than 65 percent of the targeted area till May 20, which is considered as the optimum time of sowing for getting maximum production, they said, citing as a reason. 

Pakistan, which is one of the largest cotton producers in the world, is expected to produce 11 million bales for the current crop year, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. The latest industry data showed that cotton output from the Punjab increased 55 percent year-on-year to three million bales, while production from Sindh jumped 22 percent to 2.9 million bales.

Usman said world cotton is also expected to increase 10 percent this year. He said cotton arrivals are swift and crop season might end earlier than the schedule.  “But growers have slowed down supply to ginners, which would keep the market stable,” he added. “Mills are busy building stocks of quality cotton available this time in the market.” PCGA’s figures showed that ginners sold 4.23 million bales to spinners during the fortnight as compared to 3.14 million bales a year ago, indicating an increase of 34.61 percent. A total of 0.18 million bales were sold to exporters, up 89 percent as against 95,490 bales last year. Usman said mills have mostly purchased local cotton, and a very little or nothing has been imported.

So far, 979 ginning factories have started their operations as compared to 931 mills by this time last year, he added. The current’s cotton stocks stand at 1.57 million bales as against the last year’s 1.13 bales, PCGA’s data showed.