Need to import more cotton to sustain textile sector

14 Oct '10

2 min read

Cotton production in Pakistan is estimated to be around 11.5 million bales against the target of 14 million bales which was projected for the current cropping season. Pakistan might require more than 3 million bales of raw cotton, which has to be imported in order to fulfill the demands of the domestic textile sector.

The country was expected to attain the target projected for the cropping season 2010-11, but the floods have washed away the cotton crop sown on an area of 600,000 hectares.

Pakistan was anticipating a bumper crop this time. It was estimated that the country would produce 14 million bales of cotton as against the 12.8 million bales of cotton produced during the last cropping season. The textile sector in Pakistan has an annual requirement of 14 million bales of cotton.

It has been estimated that the devastating floods in the country has caused a damage of more than Rs 120 billion in the cotton growing regions of Punjab and Sindh. The cotton crop has recorded a loss of over 30 percent in terms of value in comparison to the other major crops of the country due to the recent floods. The textile industry is bound to import more than 3 million bales of cotton which would amount to Rs 120 billions ($1.395 billion).

Cotton had been sown on 3.4 million hectares of land, of which 0.6 million hectares had been damaged. The country had recorded a loss of around 2.5 million bales of raw cotton. The country is expected to face a severe scarcity of cotton in the near future as more than 20 percent of the crop has been damaged by the floods.

Fibre2fashion News Desk-India

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