Cotton production in Pakistan this season has broken all previous records to shoot to 14.81 million bales as on April 30, 2012, surpassing the earlier record of 14.31 million bales registered in 2004-05 cotton season.
Compared to production of 11.70 million bales of cotton last season, Pakistan has already produced about 3.11 million bales more in the current season.
There are over 20 days left for the current cotton season to end and experts anticipate the production to touch 16 million bales.
The Cotton Crop Assessment Committee (CCAC) in Pakistan had initially projected production of 14.01 million bales of cotton during the current crop season 2011-12. However, owing to torrential rains and floods in the cotton growing provinces of Sindh and Punjab, the CCAC had later downwardly revised its target to 12.20 million bales.
A record number of 13.44 million cotton bales were purchased by textile mills in the country, while another 1.11 million bales were exported by private sector exporters, during the period up to April 30, 2012.
During the same period, Pakistan imported over one million bales of better quality cotton from countries like India, Brazil and the US for blending purpose.
In the nine months up to April 2012, better cotton yields were witnessed in all leading cotton producing countries – China, India, Pakistan and the US.
Global cotton consumption would be less than production in 2012-13, according to the International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC). It expects the situation to result in an increase in global cotton stocks by 11 percent to 14.7 million tons during next season.
Fibre2fashion News Desk - India