Pakistan is likely to miss the cotton production target by 2-2.5 million bales against the set target of 15 million bales, due to heavy rains which caused flooding in the cotton growing belt of Sindh province, officials said. They said that the government would revise the cotton production target in the first week of October.
According to sources, the devastating floods and breaches in saline water drains have played havoc with the standing crops including rice, cotton, onions and chilies in Sindh. The government has set cotton production target at 15 million bales for 2011-12, but recent floods have severely damaged cotton crop in lower parts of Sindh. Officials said that almost 50 percent of the cotton crop in Sindh province has been damaged and cotton production would remain at 13 to 13.5 million bales for the year against the set target of 15 million bales.
The cotton crop is badly affected by the floods in Mirpurkhas, Badin, Tando Muhammad Khan, Umarkot, Badin, Dadu, Ghotki, Hyderabad, Jacobabad, Jamshoro, Khairpur, Larkana, Matiari, Mirpurkhas, N.Feroze, Shaheed Benazirabad, Shikarpur, Tharparkar, Thatta and Sanghar districts.
The government is likely to revise the cotton production target in the first week of October from 15 million bales to 13-13.5 million bales for the current fiscal year, sources disclosed.
They said, "It is not essential that the loss to the crop would compel the country to import rough cotton, because many power looms and over 12 dozens textile mills have closed down due to shortage of gas and electricity. So, the basic requirement of cotton in the domestic market has reduced". The price of cotton in the local market has already increased from Rs 5550-5650 to Rs 7,100 per mound due to the recent damages to the crop in Sindh.
Sources said the total crop affected area in Sindh is estimated to be around 1.6 million acres. The agriculture experts have put the flood losses to agriculture sector of Sindh at Rs 200-250 billions, saying that current floods have not only resulted in the deaths of 135 people but also has damaged standing cotton, rice, onions, chillies, tomatoes, sugarcane crops, besides perishing over 1,20,000 cattle heads.
They said that so far the floods have destroyed 2-2.5 million bales of cotton, two million tons of Irri-6 rice, 70 percent of sunflower, 80 percent onions, 70 percent tomatoes, 90 percent green chilies along with other crops as 22 districts out of 23 were badly affected in the province.
The province was producing around 3 million tons of Irri-6 rice and floods have badly damaged the crop, rice production in the province would decline to 1-1.5 million tons against set target of 3 million tons, while the cotton production would decline to 05-1 million bales against set target of 4.5 million bales in the province. Pakistan annually exports nearly two million tons of Irri-6 rice to different countries especially to gulf region and last year it exported Irri-6 rice worth $1.1 billion. This year Pakistan would not be able to export Irri-6 rice and the economy would suffer a loss of $1.1 billion.