国际英语新闻：Floods cause immense damage to Pakistani agriculture

ISLAMABAD, Aug. 21 (Xinhua) -- Massive floods in Pakistan that have killed up to 1,600 people, left 20 million homeless and destroyed crops over an estimated area of more than 1.64 million hectares, farmers and officials told Xinhua.

But some of the concerned government officials say that the exact damage to crops is not to be assessed yet finally because more damages are expected as the flood wave is not over.

Agriculture experts and observers estimated that Pakistan would have to import three million cotton bales as the floods have damaged more than two million bales over the cotton crop area of 280,000 hectares.

Pakistan, in April, hoped to produce 14 million bales of cotton in the 2010/11 season, compared with about 12.7 million bales the previous financial year 2009/10.

"We have carefully estimated that cotton crop of 2 to 2.5 million bales valuing 75 to 80 billion rupees (1 U.S. dollar equals 85 Pakistani rupees) got destroyed. Which will be the most damaging factor to the economy and will also affect the export of textile products," Arif Hussain, an agriculturist from Punjab province told Xinhua on Friday.

Hussain was hopeless for any recovery and said, "This target is unachievable now and we shall have to import three million bales to make up for the shortfall."

A Pakistani cotton bale weighs 170 kg. Despite being the world' s fourth biggest cotton producer, Pakistan annually imports around 2 million bales to feed its textile industry.

Pakistan, a country that is already facing white sugar crises and had imported a total of 525,000 tonnes of sugar during August, will also have to buy another big quantity as the floods had damaged sugar cane crop of over 80,000 hectares and of worth 600 million dollars.

Last year, Pakistan could produce little more than three million tonnes of white sugar against an annual demand of 4.2 million tonnes. The next crop, due in November, was expected to produce about 3.8 million tonnes of white sugar before the floods struck.

Sources from Pakistan's federal food ministry and farmer association estimated carefully on Friday that the output of refined sugar would fall by 500,000 tonnes in coming season after a splash flood destroyed a big quantity of the crop.

Market gurus are expecting that in the months to come the cost of sugar would increase many times around 125 to 130 rupees per kg almost double than that of now.