The government is all set to re-impose sales tax and customs duty on the import of cotton, as was done last year, to compensate the growers and to convince them to bring maximum area under this crop and boosting up the per acre yield. Chairman of Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA) Haji Muhammad Akram hoped that such steps would help in attracting the farmers to cultivate cotton and he was optimistic that Government would also resolve other problems confronted by the farmerslike non-availability of well-germinated and certified seed , encourage use of modern technology, ensuring supply of good quality pesticides on reasonable price. Besides, meeting the shortage of irrigation water. Haji Akram said that since Pakistan was an agricultural country,it was shameful to import cotton from other countries and it must produce more cotton to end the gap between production and consumption and to make country self-sufficient in cotton, grain, pulses, gram and edible oil seeds etc. He eulogised the efforts of Pakistan Kissan Ittehad to convince the Government to revive the sales tax and customs duty on the import of cotton. Ex-Chairman of PCGA Shehzad Ali Khan suggested that Present caretaker or coming Government should not introduce Pro-India policies .He said that farmers are already facing manifold problems due to non-availability of water and unattention of the Government. PCGA leadership said that Pakistan can produce cotton of medium staple length , long and extra long staple cotton for the production of finer yarn counts for subsequent transformation into high value added finished products. They said that PML-N government introduced customs duty (CD) of 5% along with the 5% sales tax to save Pakistani farmers and to discourage the import of cotton which caused enhancing the budgetary deficit. The sources further stated that Finance Division had moved a summary to the ECC to re-impose the customs duty and sales tax on imported cotton which was approved by the ECC. They hoped that Government would continue this policy for the survival of farmers as well as ginners.
