Cotton crop sowing during the crop season 2018-19 has registered 11 percent growth in Punjab, where as it was decreased by 40 percent in the Sindh province, the reduction in the crop sowing in the Sindh was mainly attributed with the low availability of water for irrigation in current season.
Overall cotton crop sowing has registered over 1 percent increase across the crop producing areas of the country as compared the cultivation of corresponding period of last season. The crop had been sown over 2.69 million hectares of land.
The cotton sowing targets were fixed at 2.95 million hectares in order to produce over 14 million cotton bales during the crop season 2018-19 in order to fulfill the domestic requirements as well as for exporting, said Cotton Commissioner in the Ministry of National Food Security and Research Dr Khalid Abdullah.
Talking to APP here on Thursday, he said that crop cultivation targets, which fixed for the current sowing season were achieved by over 91 percent as it went up by 1.0 percent as compared with the area under cotton crop cultivation during same period of last year.
He said that over all cotton sowing in the Province of Punjab registered about 11 percent growth as it had cultivated the crop over 2.29 million hectares of land as against the set targets of 2.31 million hectares for the period under review.
However, he informed that crop sowing in the Sindh Province was decreased by 40 percent and attributed the low sowing trend with dry weather during the crop sowing time as well as shortage of water for crop irrigation.
The province, he said could achieve the sowing targets by 66 percent and cultivated the crop over 0.41 million hectares as against the targets of 0.62 million hectares fixed for current sowing season.
Meanwhile, he said that Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces were assigned a task to cultivated the crop over 0.1 million hectares. Dr Abdullah said that due to recent rains the water availability for crop irrigation would strengthened, which would help in further boosting the area under cotton growing as well as enhance the output.
He said that prices in the local had observed stable trend and it was recorded at Rs 3,000 per 40 kg, adding that it was an encouraging sign for local farmers to grow more crop for maximizing their profit. Besides, he informed that the federal government has imposed import duty on cotton, which would also help in price stabilization in the local markets.
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