Pakistan’s cotton crisis has reached the point where the country is importing the weakness it should have corrected at home. Textile mills have begun buying American and Brazilian cotton before the local ginning season has properly opened, and one recent order of more than 206,000 bales from the United States, accounting for almost the entire weekly US export sale, is best read as a vote of no confidence in the domestic crop and in the policies meant to protect it.
Cotton sits at the base of Pakistan’s largest export industry, which means its collapse cannot be treated as a routine farm-sector disappointment. Pakistan is trying to build an export-led recovery while importing the fibre that feeds its textile mills, a contradiction that should worry every economic manager in Islamabad because it converts an agricultural failure into an industrial cost, a foreign-exchange burden and a competitiveness problem.
Last season, Pakistan produced around 5.6 million bales against a target of 10.2 million. For 2026-27, the official target is 9.64 million bales, while some projections put output closer to 6.94 million. Industry demand remains far above domestic supply, which means imports could run into several million bales and the cotton import bill may cross $1 billion this year.
The decline did not come out of nowhere. Pakistan once produced close to 15 million bales. Today, output is near a third of that level. Cotton acreage has fallen and yields have stagnated, as farmers have shifted to crops that offer more predictable returns.
At the centre of the story is policy capture. Traditional cotton zones have been allowed to move towards sugarcane despite recurring cotton shortfalls, and Rahim Yar Khan, once among the country’s great cotton districts with nearly 800,000 acres under the crop, has watched acreage shrink as sugarcane expanded and new mills changed local incentives. The shift has also worsened growing conditions for cotton by increasing humidity and facilitating the spread of diseases such as leaf curl virus.
Tax policy has deepened the damage. Growers and ginners complain that locally produced cotton faces an 18 per cent general sales tax while imported cotton enjoys relative advantages, even as mills face high electricity tariffs, expensive gas and costly credit.
There are still reasons to act. Sindh’s growers are showing better sentiment where water, prices and pest conditions have improved, while Punjab’s search for cooperation on cottonseed research and germplasm is sensible.
At the end of the day, Pakistan needs a five-year cotton compact that protects cotton belts from further sugarcane expansion, bars new sugar mills in traditional cotton zones and gives farmers certified seed and pest support.
Contrary to common perception, cotton is not merely lint for textiles. It feeds the edible oil and livestock chains as well, which means revival would save dollars on more than one import line. *