Govt responsible for credit crunch in cotton – Mr Rabbani

24 Sep '09

2 min read

According to the Pakistan Yarn Merchants Association (PYMA), the cotton sector in the country faced its worst ever institutional agriculture credit crunch due to non-professional approach of creditor agencies and planners in agriculture ministry.

Ghulam Rabbani, a senior member of PYMA said that, “Besides other things, the cotton crop scrap percentage stands around 20 percent every crop season, due to wrong estimation and improper disbursement of agricultural credit to the growers”.

He said growing demand and slow upward moving pace of agriculture credit remained one of the main reasons behind the low production of crops especially in cotton and that institutional agriculture credit demand and supply gap has widened by 62 percent (Rs 419 billion) as the demand has been estimated at Rs 679 billion.

He added by saying that, “We are still facing brunt of poor policy as during 2008-09, agriculture credit demand at national level was Rs 533 billion as compared with the availability of Rs 233 billion, showing a shortfall of Rs 300 billion”.

“The financial mangers and agriculture planners at the federal ministries are responsible for poor supply of seed, insecticides, fertiliser and other inputs to cotton sector as no one could streamline the timely supply of credit to growers”, he concluded by saying.

The government has set a cotton target of 13.36 million bales for 2009-10 against 14 million bales set last year from 3.2 million hectares areas, which means it has lowered production estimates by 4.57 percent.

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India

More Textiles News - Pakistan...