It is also reported that most of the lower grades of cotton had been disposed by the ginners earlier so that the remaining cotton in stock is comparatively of better grades. Thus the meagre stocks of current crop (August 2016/July 2017) will mostly be lifted soon with hardly any quantities which may be carried into the new season. Small quantities of the new cotton crop (August 2017/July 2018) may arrive by the end of June/middle of July 2017 but larger arrivals of the new cotton crop may not arrive before the end of July/beginning of August 2017. Subject to conducive weather, arrivals of new crop may pick up over the next couple of months in meaningful commercial quantities.
Traders said that textile industry policies of the government continue to hurt the industry even though some steps have recently been taken to revive the textile industry. Now the new federal budget for the year 2017/2018 is due to be announced on Friday the 26th of May 2017 which could provide some relief to the domestic textile industry. Till now, imported yarns have been hurting the local textile industry.
Up to now, the domestic textile industry claims that it has been ignored by the government leading to closure of several units. Textile sources add that still more textile mills continue to close down due to lack of competitiveness with neighbouring regional textile industries because of high costs of inputs which have increased the cost of doing business immensely.
It is generally feared that unless the government takes immediate and suitable steps, a large section of the textile industry in Pakistan will close down further. Thus timely steps by the government are a sine qua non for the revival of the domestic textile industry.
On the global economic and financial front, the recent suicide bomber attack in Manchester last Monday has shaken the very socioeconomic foundations of Great Britain. Legitimate fear has spread not only to London but to other parts of Britain after authorities presumed that another such attack appeared imminent in the United Kingdom. The likes of Salman Abedi have shown that they could conceivably paralyse and destroy not only a few leading cities in the industrial world, but could spread scare and terror globally.
The frightful truth is that the likes of homegrown suicide bombers like Abedi could hold entire cities to ransom not only in Great Britain, but in America, Europe, the Middle East, India, Brazil or Mexico. Such acts of suicide bombers can easily lead to destroying global trade and industrial infrastructure. In this connection, we should not forget the sophisticated planning and knowhow which helped to destroy the World Trade Centre Towers and the Pentagon earlier this century. Be it Brussels or Paris, or London for that matter, the rationale and motivation of these suicide bombers must be studied and investigated to forestall further such eventualities which not only destroy the economic and social infrastructure of the country, but they also lay down their lives fearlessly in the process.
We may do well to study the psychology of these fearless individuals like Salman Abedi who are motivated to lay down their lives, keeping in mind that he was born and bred in Britain. Such incidents like the attack on the audience of a concert performed by pop star Ariana Grande who were departing the concert hall needs to be studied so as to ascertain the root causes for their rationale.
The fear is that such attacks could eventually lead to a downturn which could parallel or exceed the Great Recession of 2008. Since the beginning of this calendar year (2017) many analysts and commentators have already been talking of a great crash in the equity and commodity markets.
In other business news, rating agency Moody's was reported on last Wednesday to have slashed China's credit rating for the first time in three decades due to concern about China's increasing debt and also its slowing economic growth. In Japan, the sentiment amongst the manufacturers has also fallen in May despite having risen in April 2017. Cotton futures in New York also fell earlier this week due to favourable weather in several areas in America and also due to reported cancellations of export sales to China and India.