“We are in a very good position to cater demand from China, Pakistan and Bangladesh. They are in short supply and we have a bumper crop,” said Paresh Valia, an exporter based in Bhavnagar district in western Gujarat state.

“Fortunately India has five million bales of cotton surplus this year. The spinners have already confirmed orders for one million bales at $0.90-94 that have started arriving,” he added. He said there would be shortage of 2 million bales during October-March period and 2 million bales during April-September that would be covered through imports

Pakistan has only eleven helicopters for civilian needs, which is the lowest number in the region and insufficient to meet emergency needs like earthquake or floods, industry official said on Tuesday.

The devastation to roads has compounded infrastructure deficiencies of the country as the government added only 580km roads in two years (2008/10) against 5,052km roads in 2006/07 alone. Transport sector has been adversely impacted by the recent floods in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and Sindh where most of the low quality roads were completely washed away or damaged. According to statistics, the development of high quality roads has been on decline since 1996/97, when 8,197km of hard-wearing roads and 3,725km of low quality roads were constructed. The new roads built during 1996/97 were 11,922km. In 2006/07 although the construction of sturdy roads was 7,470km, but the low quality types registered a decline of 2,418km as these were converted into developed roads. Due to heavily damaged road infrastructure, it is becoming exceedingly hard to transport relief goods to the flood-stricken people in far flung areas.

So far as the sources of higher profitability were concerned, this was primarily due to robust deposit growth, culminating in an increase in the earning assets, particularly investments in government securities, and wide spreads between lending and deposit rates. A sharp fall in the provisioning requirements also contributed a great deal in raising profits. Such a scenario developed because the government, in order to meet its budgetary requirements, kept borrowing heavily from commercial banks through treasury bills, while the banks found it convenient to hold risk-free earning instruments. It appears that the banks' profitability in the coming months would largely depend on two main factors, working almost in the opposite directions. A substantial increase in NPLs could be expected due to the massive floods, which have caused extensive damages, especially in the agricultural and SME sectors. This could result in higher provisioning and lower profitability. On the other hand, the government may have to increase its borrowings from the commercial banks to meet its growing needs and this could lead to higher profits. In balance, however, the banking sector of the country is expected to maintain a respectable level of profitability in the near future, without facing major hiccups.

Pakistan may miss the cotton production target by about 2.25 million bales due to devastation caused by the floods. At present, production of 11.75 million cotton bales is expected against the set target of 14 million bales for the year 2010/11, officials at Ministry of Food and Agriculture said. Cotton was sown on 3.199 million hectares, out of which cultivated area of 0.588 million hectares has been damaged.

Sources told Business Recorder here on Tuesday that the quarter-wise and monthly breakup of revenue collection target of Rs 1667 billion for 2010-11 has been issued to the Large Taxpayer Units and Regional Tax Offices incorporating amount to be collected from the services sector from second quarter of current fiscal year. The FBR has estimated to collect Rs 674.9 billion sales tax during 2010-11 taking into account the enforcement measures and potential of different sectors.

The three major car assemblers have more than 90 per cent share in local car sales. Pak Suzuki secured the highest profitability growth of 330 per cent, Indus Motor 55 per cent while Honda Atlas Car remained in the red though its losses dropped, according to the data compiled by Topline Research.

The government has deferred plans to export its surplus wheat, the minister for food and agriculture said on Monday, after devastating floods washed away grain stocks and raised concerns about the next crop. Pakistan, Asia’s third-largest wheat producer, said in April it would export 2 million tons of wheat after a bumper crop of 23.86 million tons in 2009-10, and a carryover of 4.2 million tons from the previous crop. But it held back exports because of low prices in the international market until a recent rally.