DHAKA, Nov 17 (NNN-BSS) – Bangladesh set a target to increase cotton production five times by 2030, introducing new varieties and expanding cultivation areas, since the country appeared as the second largest consumer of the industrial crop.
“Cotton could be a major cash crop, as we need to spend three billion USD every year, for its import, to meet its expanding demand in the textile industry,” Cotton Development Board’s additional director, Md Fakhre Alam Ibne Tabib said, yesterday.
The country currently produces less than 0.2 million cotton bales (one bale equals roughly 480 pounds) a year, against the annual demand for 8.5 million bales, according to official statistics.
Against the backdrop of high demands, Bangladeshi textile and spinning mills and other users, import cotton from India, the United States, several African and Central Asian nations, Australia, Brazil and Pakistan.
Tabib said, they set the target to enhance domestic cotton production, to one million bales, using newly invented high-yielding and hybrid varieties and using the vast low fertile barren lands, in the country’s south-eastern hill region, along some plain districts.– NNN-BSS
