Cotton production plunges to just 4.8m bales

Cotton production has dropped by more than 40 per cent mainly because of climate change and floods giving a nightmare to the country’s ‘financial wizards’ as the foreign exchange-starved country will have to import about 7 million cotton bales to meet the textile industry’s demand this season. Total white lint production is expected to be barely 4.8m bales this year, raising the cotton import demand to 7m bales, while so far import contracts of around 5m bales have been signed. The Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA) on Monday reported that cotton production remained 40.28pc less than the last year’s harvest by Dec 1, an alarming drop of 2.9m bales. Last year, Pakistan produced over 7.168m bales before the start of December against 4.28m bales this year.