KARACHI: Karachi Cotton Association has welcomed the government’s decision to form Pakistan Cotton Authority to ensure provision of quality seed, monitoring and enhancing the cotton yield with a view to increase production of cotton in the country.

KCA Chairman Khawaja M Zubair, in his statement on Wednesday, also welcomed the government’s plan to create a Farmers’ Forum under Federal Ministry of Food Security and Research to ensure the representation of the farmers in policy making and for early resolution for their issues. Under this forum, national cotton conference will be held to address the difficulties and problems being faced by cotton trade.

He said the above decisions were in right direction and would help achieve sustainable growth in production of cotton and safeguard the interest of the cotton growers as future of the country depended on growth of agriculture specially of cotton.

The government should also focus on mobilizing all resources at federal and provincial levels to bring more area under cotton cultivation mainly in Balochistan to increase yield per acre to place ban on cultivation of paddy or sugarcane and setting-up of sugar mills in the areas already earmarked for cultivation of cotton to gear-up Pakistan Central Cotton Committee and all cotton research institutes to evolve high yield and virus resistance cotton seed varieties for cultivation to take measures to import pure and certified pesticides in small packing instead of bulk to avoid adulteration to advice the cotton growers and the ginners to switchover to modern farming and ginning practices year after year to increase cotton production and improve quality of cotton to achieve the desired results, KCA Chief said.