Finance Minister Miftah Ismail has suggested that permitting cotton imports from India would be possible to fill an urgent need brought on by floods.
On Monday, Miftah’s suggestion came after textile exporters requested 2.5 million bales of cotton to fill an urgent need brought on by the catastrophic floods that destroyed about half the nation’s entire crop.
Finance Minister Miftah Ismail discussed a plan to permit the import of cotton and vegetables from India during a meeting with a delegation from the Pakistan Textile Exporters Association (PTEA), led by its Patron-in-Chief Khurram Mukhtar.
Miftah said we will allow the import of cotton to ensure our mills can fulfill their export orders, despite pressure from industrialists who have been hoarding the material and are now campaigning against permitting imports.
The finance minister told PTEA that the nation had essentially cut economic connections with India when New Delhi unilaterally altered the status of Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
He further said, “First create an environment for permitting imports from India.”
However, in order to save time and money on logistics, textile exporters are eager to import cotton, their basic raw material, from India over land.
