Pakistan is likely to miss the cotton crop target set at 15.1 million bales for this year by 1.72 million bales due to lack of interest of farmers, rains and substandard seed. The total cotton crop is expected to be around 13.38 million bales.

This was calculated in the second meeting of the Cotton Crop Assessment Committee (CCAC), held on Friday, under the chairmanship of Secretary, Ministry of Textile Industry Amir Marwat. According to statistics presented in the meeting, Punjab is calculated to have 9.30 million bales, Sindh 3.50 million, Balochistan 0.0015 million, while KP is estimated to have 0.588 bales.

The calculations were made on the basis of data provided by representatives of provincial governments of Sindh and Punjab, Plant Protection Department, Trading Cooperation of Pakistan, cotton growers, All Pakistan Textile Mills Association, and Pakistan Central Cotton Committee.

According to insiders the main reason of less crop this year, is due to low prices of cotton last year, due to which farmers largely suffered.

The third assessment meeting is scheduled around 20th October 2015.

Last year, growers have been running pillar and post to sell their cotton at any rate but there was no buyer, even government did not procured one million bales as per promise and hardly bought 95,000 bales, which did not helped in lifting the price of the crop, said a top official.

According to officials the cotton crop size is assessed on the basis of data provided by the provincial governments, yield parameters of cotton.