Cotton was once Pakistan’s white gold: the crop that underwrote exports, powered industry and sustained millions of rural livelihoods. That era is ending. This season’s numbers tell the story with brutal clarity. By mid-December, arrivals hovered around 5.3 million bales against an official target of just over 10 million. Output is now projected at barely seven million bales.
The damage does not stop at the farm gates. Textiles contribute about 60% of Pakistan’s export earnings and remain the country’s largest industrial employer, which is why a cotton shock quickly becomes an economic one.
What makes this episode especially alarming is not that climate stress and pests have struck again, but that market institutions have been allowed to seize up at precisely the moment they are needed most. The Karachi Cotton Exchange building has remained sealed, halting trading activity and disrupting the publication of cotton rates that underpin daily transactions. Brokers have warned of losses running into billions of rupees, while spinning and textile units report that banks are reluctant to extend working capital because an official reference rate is unavailable. An economy already short of confidence can ill afford to suspend its own price discovery mechanism.
None of this was unforeseeable. Last spring, planners clung to ambitious targets as if aspiration could substitute for agronomy. Production has instead come in about 34% below target, reflecting a mix of climate pressure, pest management failures, weak seed quality, and the long neglect of extension services and irrigation reliability.
After importing roughly 6.2 million bales last year, stakeholders say Pakistan may need around 7 million bales this season to keep mills supplied–an added burden on foreign exchange at a moment when reserves are already fragile. Furthermore, idle looms translate into idle workers and lost export earnings, feeding a cycle of lower growth and higher vulnerability. This is how an agricultural miscalculation metastasises into a macroeconomic shock.
The response must be as practical as the crisis is immediate. Policymakers must restore the market’s pricing mechanism and the institutional plumbing that allows banks to finance the cotton-to-textile chain. We have to stop treating cotton as an afterthought by investing in high-yield, climate-resilient seeds and credible pest control. Most importantly, there remains a need to align targets with evidence and climate realities rather than political comfort. Cotton cannot survive as a heated slogan or a newspaper headline. If Pakistan wants export stability, it would have to rebuild the crop’s credibility, starting with the institutions that keep its market alive. *