Punjab’s cotton cultivation for the 2025-26 season fell to 2.614 million acres against a provincial target of 3.2 million acres, an 18.3 percent shortfall and the lowest planted area recorded in more than three decades, according to final acreage data released by the Punjab Agriculture Department. In Rajanpur district, once among the highest-producing cotton zones in southern Punjab, the planted area contracted to 116,800 acres, down from 198,200 acres in 2018-19, a decline of 41 percent over five seasons, district extension records show. The figures were confirmed by the Punjab Crop Reporting Service in its end-of-season report dated 15 August 2025.

Nationally, cotton production fell to 4.91 million bales in the 2023-24 fiscal year, according to data released by the Ministry of National Food Security and Research and verified by the Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association. That figure represents a 66 percent drop from the country’s peak production of 14.6 million bales recorded in 2004-05. In 2024-25, provisional ginning data up to 31 March 2025 showed cotton arrivals at ginneries stood at 5.4 million bales, an improvement on the previous year but still 63 percent below the peak. The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics reported that cotton production in 2023-24 was the lowest in nearly four decades excluding the flood-damaged season of 2010-11, when 11.7 million bales were recorded.

The decline in cotton acreage and output carries direct consequences for Pakistan’s largest export sector. The State Bank of Pakistan’s Annual Report for 2023-24 states that textiles and apparel account for 55.8 percent of total export earnings. In the fiscal year 2022-23, textile exports reached 16.5 billion dollars, but they declined to 13.7 billion dollars in 2023-24, a drop of 17 percent, which the central bank attributed primarily to the domestic cotton shortage and increased raw material import costs. A 2022 study by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics estimated that the cotton value chain, from farm inputs to finished garments, contributed 8.5 percent to national GDP and provided direct and indirect employment to 40 percent of the industrial workforce.

Rajanpur district illustrates how the decline has affected each stage of the value chain. Ginning factories in the district have been operating at sharply reduced capacity. According to data maintained by the Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association, Rajanpur district had 47 registered ginning units at its peak in the early 2000s. By 2024, only 19 units remained operational, and of these, just four operated for more than three weeks during the 2024-25 ginning season. A ginner in Jampur tehsil, whose factory processed 85,000 bales per season in 2005, told the association’s field surveyors in February 2025 that his unit processed 4,200 bales in the 2024-25 season, operating for 19 days. The association’s data shows that nationwide ginning capacity utilisation fell to 22 percent in 2024-25, down from 78 percent in 2004-05. The average number of operational days for a ginning factory in Punjab dropped from 140 days a decade ago to 28 days in the current season.

The cost differential has affected the competitiveness of Pakistan’s textile exports.

The cost differential has affected the competitiveness of Pakistan’s textile exports.

Employment in cotton-related work has contracted in parallel. A household survey conducted by the Punjab Bureau of Statistics in December 2024, covering 2,400 rural households across Rajanpur and two adjoining districts, found that seasonal agricultural employment linked to cotton fell by 67 percent between 2019 and 2024. The survey recorded that the number of days of cotton-picking work available per household dropped from an average of 52 days in 2019 to 17 days in 2024. Women constituted 82 percent of the cotton-picking workforce in the surveyed villages, and the data showed that female labour force participation in the cotton harvest months declined from 44 percent to 12 percent over the five-year period. Daily wage data collected by the Punjab Labour Department shows that the average daily wage for cotton picking in southern Punjab, which was 850 rupees in 2019, had risen to 1,200 rupees by 2024 in nominal terms, but the sharp reduction in available work days meant that seasonal earnings fell by more than half in inflation-adjusted terms.

The shortage of domestic cotton has forced Pakistan’s textile industry to rely on imports. The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics trade data shows that raw cotton imports rose from 1.2 billion dollars in 2020-21 to 2.1 billion dollars in 2022-23, before falling to 1.6 billion dollars in 2023-24 as mills reduced capacity utilisation. The All Pakistan Textile Mills Association reported that between July 2024 and February 2025, cotton imports stood at 1.9 million bales, costing 987 million dollars, putting the full-year import bill on track to exceed 1.5 billion dollars. Imported cotton costs an average of 12 to 15 percent more than domestically grown lint of equivalent quality, according to APTMA’s procurement data, which shows that the landed cost of imported Brazilian or US cotton in Karachi ranges from 18,500 to 20,200 rupees per maund, compared to a domestic price of 16,000 to 17,000 rupees for similar staple length.

The cost differential has affected the competitiveness of Pakistan’s textile exports. According to the International Trade Centre’s trade map data, Pakistan’s share of global cotton yarn exports declined from 13.8 percent in 2010 to 7.1 percent in 2023,........

© The Friday Times