Senate Standing Committee on National Food Security and Research has urged the government to expedite the release of funds to the Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) to timely purchase cotton from growers and stabilize prices.
The panel at its latest meeting conveyed serious concern on the government’s part to delay the announcement of Cotton’s Support Price this year, reported a national daily.
The committee had earlier recommended the minimum support price of Rs. 8,500 per 40kg while the Economic Coordination Committee of the Federal Cabinet has the mandate to fix the price.
Chairman Muzaffar Hussain Shah is concerned that this delay may discourage farmers from Cotton cultivation as they are forced to sell their crop at Rs. 6,500 to Rs. 7,000 per kg.
While the Ministry of National Food Security has requested the government to allow TCP to buy the Cotton from growers, but the committee was briefed that the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has yet to release the funds for the purpose.
The chairman of the Senate committee asked the government to release the funds by the SBP immediately. He opined that cotton production in Sindh has been good but the crop in Punjab may get affected due to floods. Pertinently, the Punjab government is set to assess the damage caused by floods to understand the full impact on the cotton sector.
The committee also expressed concerns over the non-payment of salaries to the staff of the Pakistan Central Cotton Committee (PCCC) and the non-recovery of cotton cess from textile mills.
Senator Shah requested a report from the ministry regarding these issues and called for immediate action to resolve the salary payment and cotton cess collection matters.
Please don’t intervene in the free functioning cotton market as it is well linked with international market. Why we want to give higher than market price to cotton farmers? Any discrepancy between local and international cotton market price is simply due to quality, so farmers should be trained to produce quality cotton.
The corruption and anomalies in TCP in earlier such operations are well known. Large farmers simply want to dispose off their low quality cotton at high prices through TCP, while such operation does not benefit to small farmers.
The money spend on TCP to distort the market should be used to strengthen agriculture markets and training small farmers to produce quality cotton.
Absolutely right Dr sb, TCP has not the capacity to stablize the prices even intervening the market. Just loss of govt funds and opening the doors of corruption thus ending up to NAB cases, buying on high price and selling on lower price at the end in view of a big crop. Just buying a few lakh bales will not support the market.We have witnessed in past.