LCCI Recommends Tackling Poor Cotton Production on Emergency Basis

The Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) has urged the government to declare a cotton emergency in the agriculture sector.

The request comes in the wake of a significant fall in cotton production, causing disruptions in the economic chain.

President LCCI, Mian Tariq Misbah, along with Senior Vice President LCCI, Nasir Hameed Khan, and Vice President LCCI, Tahir Manzoor Chaudhry, spoke to the media after a meeting on Thursday. LCCI President said that lower cotton yield impacted other directly or indirectly related industries, including ginners and growers.

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The chamber officials said that the textile sector was contributing around 60 percent to the total exports of the country. However, since 2017-18 cotton production has declined persistently.

From a harvest of 11.9 million bales in 2017-18, production declined by 17.5 percent to 9.8 million bales in 2018-19, and further dropped by 6.9 percent to become 9.18 million bales in 2019-20, they informed.

Cotton yield has also consistently declined since 2017-18, and this coupled with the previously mentioned factors has also led textile exports to decrease significantly.

Textile exports from Pakistan came down from $13.58 billion in 2018-19 to $12.78 billion in 2019-20. Even now, this decreasing trend is being witnessed, as in the first six months of the current fiscal year (Jul-Dec 2020), the textile exports have locked in at $6.62 billion compared to $6.82 billion in the same period of the previous year (Jul-Dec 2019).

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Simultaneously, the cotton import bill has also gone up due to this decline in domestic cotton production.

The LCCI officials opined that urgent steps are needed to tackle challenges like low water availability and pest attacks, as these were among the primary contributors to lower cotton production, yield, and eventually textile exports.

They urged the government to take measures on war footing to control the situation as the entire economy would dwindle if cotton production slipped further.