MULTAN - Seed cotton (Phutti) equivalent to over 5.645 million or exactly 5,645,967 bales has reached ginning factories across the country till May 1, 2021. According to final fortnightly report of Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA) for the cotton season 2020-21 released to media on Monday, Punjab arrival figures stood at 3.5 million or 3,509,798 bales while Sindh contributed over 2.1 million or 2,136,169 bales. PCGA could not release fortnightly reports during Apr 2021 due to the pandemic and the final report released yesterday does not carry last year’s statistics for the month of April. The PCGA report says, “Data was not collected last year on May 1, 2020 due to COVID-19”. Hence, final report does not show comparison of statistics with last year’s data. However, PCGA’s mid March 2021 report does indicate the shortfall then stood at 34.16 per cent compared to corresponding period i.e year 2020, when arrivals were recorded at 8.57 million bales. Cotton production plunged to new low this year prompting the federal and provincial governments to take initiatives to revive past production patterns and move forward to touch new highs. Vice President, Pakistan Central Cotton Committee (PCCC) Dr. Muhammad Ali Talpur had said a few days ago that a proposal was under consideration by the government to announce cotton support price to encourage farmers and revive their confidence in the silver fibre. The report says that all the cotton that had arrived at the ginneries has been pressed into bales. Just over 5.6 million or 5,605,223 bales have been sold out with major chunk of it, 5.54 million (5,535,023) bales, bought by textile mills and 70,200 by exporters. Exactly 40,744 bales were lying unsold at the ginneries including 1715 in Sindh and 39029 in Punjab. Bahawalnagar district of Punjab remained on top with cotton arrival figure of over a million or 1,000,581 bales followed by Sanghar district in Sindh (791,278 bales) and Rahim Yar Khan (656,941 bales).