Pakistan has suspended cotton imports from India without any prior intimation owing to the border tension between the two countries. Pakistan’s ministry of agriculture’s quarantine department has decided to stop providing permits to traders who wish to import agricultural commodities including cotton from India, but it is yet to be announced officially.
The Union textiles ministry is taking up the issue with the concerned authority in Pakistan to resolve the issue, said a leading daily quoting textiles commissioner Kavita Gupta.
Owing to cotton crop failure in Pakistan last year, the country had imported close to 2.7 million bales of cotton from India. This amounted to about 40 per cent of the total cotton export from India in 2015-16. Pakistan was expected to import about 1.5 million bales from India this year.
Agricultural exports to Pakistan from India account for not more than 0.3 per cent of the total exports. The revenue for the same dropped to $225.8 million in 2015-16 from $303.9 million in 2014-15. It stood at $86.1 million in the first half of the ongoing fiscal.
