960413

MoC approves

PCSI proposal

on pricing and

spot rates

WIRASAT HUSSNAIN

KARACHI: The Ministry of Commerce has finally approved the proposal of the Pakistan Cotton Standards Institute to base the cotton pricing, daily spot rates, on grade and staple instead of variety and weight, it was learnt here on Saturday.

To prepare itself for the switch-over, which will be a major change in the pricing system of cotton, the Karachi Cotton Association has also carried out necessary amendments in its bye-laws which are likely to be announced with the arrival of the next crop.

According to Dr. Ibad Badar Siddiqui, Director, Pakistan Cotton Standards Institute, cotton grading ranges between super grade to grade 5. Grade 3 is taken as the base grade, at which a farmer/ginner would either improve the quality of his cotton and move into the higher grade, i.e. grade 2 and grade 1 or move downward to grade 4 or grade 5.

The proposed official standards of quality are strictly in conformity with the standards of Liverpool Cotton Association which has found the grading system acceptable to the international market.

He said, "We will have to give importance to variety at the production stage, but once the production has been obtained, quality and grade of cotton should determine its price if we have to sell our cotton at the international price.

"It we look at the international cotton prices we would find that price difference ranges between 5 cents to 7 cents. Selling cotton at less than 5 cents to 7 cents than the international price is a big difference when calculated for more than 2.2 million bales of cotton export target", Dr. Siddiqui added.

The cotton market of Pakistan is so much variety conscious that despite the fact that MNH 93 (a variety of cotton) is hardly being cultivated on 8.7 percent of the total area under cotton crop, ginners mark 95 percent of their stock as MNH 93 to attract buyers.

Cotton experts are of the view that at the production stage variety is necessary but after picking cotton pricing should strictly be based upon grades so that "our fixation to things like MNH 93 etc is replaced with quality consciousness". They say unless it is done, we would neither be able to increase cotton production nor would be able to get the right price for our product.

To achieve this very objective, the PCSI plans to undertake a massive education programme for growers, ginners, and spinners when it convenes an international conference on cotton standards sometime in September-October 1997. A similar conference is it had organized in October 1994.