LAHORE:Provincial Agriculture Secretary Ahmad Aziz Tarar on Thursday constituted a joint committee with All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) to finalise cotton strategy ahead of the cultivation of fresh crop in the province.
He was talking to APTMA members here at APTMA House where Additional Secretary (Task Force) Shabir Ahmad Khan, Additional Secretary (Planning) Qadeer Ahmad Bajwa, DG (Extension & Adaptive Research) Dr. Muhammad Anjum, DG (Water Management) Malik Muhammad Akram, APTMA Patron-in-Chief Dr Gohar Ejaz, Senior Vice Chairman Kamran Arshad, Vice Chairman Asad Shafi and Secretary General Raza Baqir were also present.
The agriculture secretary said the committee would consist of five members each from the Punjab government and APTMA to finalise its recommendations in a meeting scheduled for the next week. He said all the best efforts would be made to make cotton production profitable business for the farmer community.
On this occasion, Dr Gohar Ijaz said there was a misconception about the price of cotton in Pakistan, saying that it was US$1.05 in the country against 87 cents worldwide. He further pointed out that the textile industry was generating US$1.3 billion from each one million bale of cotton, which means that it was doing 310 per cent value addition at present.
According to him, the IMF had given loan of US$6 billion since 2008 while the textile export sector of the country alone has generated US$150 billion during the same period. Similarly, he added, the annual debt of the country had increased by US$5 billion per annum since 2008 while the textile industry had the potential of generating additional US$6 billion out of 15 million bales annually. He claimed the industry had the potential to add value worth US$1.3 billion against each one million bale of cotton consumed by it.
He said farmer would only be attracted if all the stakeholders were succeeded in increasing area as well as per acre yield of cotton ahead.
Senior Vice Chairman APTMA Kamran Arshad said multiple factors had been involved in reduction of cotton crop from 13 million bales in 2014 to 5 million bales today. He said the Punjab government, along with its cotton research wings, had agreed to join hands with APTMA to redesign the roadmap of how to increase cotton production in the country. In Punjab, he said, the cotton production had dropped to 3 million bales from 12 million bales in 2011-12. He recalled that the province of Punjab had registered 12 million bales back in 1993-94 as well.
Vice Chairman APTMA Asad Shafi made a detailed presentation on the existing industry challenges in terms of cotton shortage and apprised him about the short term roadmap of APTMA for revival of cotton crop in the province. He also gave a detailed introduction of the APTMA Cotton Foundation to the government functionaries.
Raza Baqir, Secretary General APTMA, extended vote of thanks to the visiting delegation and hoped that both the sides would come up with workable solutions to enhance cotton production through timely actions.