The Pakistan Kissan Ittehad (PKI) has said that delaying tactics are being used by the government circles to announce support price for cotton crop despite the recommendation of the National Assembly Special Committee on Agriculture and a resolution passed by the National Assembly.
The PKI accused the commerce and textile ministry of using delaying tactics to gain enough time for the textile industry, for what it said, to dump imported cotton in the country. Around 2.5 million bales have already been imported till 30th of June 2019, said the PKI President Khalid Khokhar in a statement issued on Friday.
Khalid Khokhar claimed that the summary moved by the Ministry of National Food Security & Research (MNFSR) for an announcement of support price was supposed to be shared with commerce division as normal secretariat procedure, but the commerce division, which is headed by Razaq Dawood, never provided their comments for two months and despite 4-5 reminders. M/o NFSR had no choice to submit a summary to ECC without comments of commerce division. Razaq Dawood when, realized this, persuaded the Minister NFSR to withdraw the summary for one week or so to get views of textile division which again took another 15 days. With views of textile division when the summary was placed before the ECC in its meeting held on 30-07-2019, Razaq Dawood requested the advisor finance to defer this agenda for another 10 days.
The ministry of finance arranged a consultation on support price on 06-08-2019 by calling Razaq Dawood and 20 members of APTMA only without calling the prime stakeholder - cotton grower. "One can understand what would be motive of such consultation and what would be decisions in that unilateral meeting with APTMA," he further alleged.
"The summary on cotton support price presented to the ECC today in hotchpotch and ECC decided to constitute a committee headed by Razaq Dawood to evaluate the procedure and fundamentals means giving more time so that farmer sells their entire harvest at through away prices," Khokhar alleged.
A non-elected advisor is playing with emotions of growers in this whole process and non-realization of the significance of the issue by Sahibzada Mehboob Sultan is also raising lots of questions in mind. It is clear the case has already been delayed by more than four months and even if decided now, it would carry no benefit for farmers at all, as the time required by the procuring agency and approval process is about two months and by the end of October 80% crop is already gone.
He that claimed Razaq Dawood has delayed the imposition of import duty by two months by using similar tactics and Pakistan Kissan Ittehad protested against his grower culling attitude. The delayed imposition of duty has resulted now when Phutti prices dropped to Rs 3200 to Rs 3400 per maund, which is already less than the cost of cultivation. The Eid holidays and bearish cotton prices in the international market put further pressure on phutti prices and ultimately grower will not invest any further on fertilizer or pesticide application to the cotton crop which is already in the loss.
"As PKI president, I would like to make it very clear that growers have several choices of crops which give good profit margin and will switch very easily. But unfortunately, ginning factories and the industry have very little choice. The PTI government through its learned advisors will learn lessons when escalate its import bill by UD$ 5-6 billion for import of raw cotton, edible oil and animal feed next year," Khalid Khokhar concluded.
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