Pakistan is grappling with severe floods and this has affected cotton prices, which have shot up by 7 per cent and yarn prices are up by 20 per cent . This is because vast tracts have been completely submerged. Whenever the price of cotton increases, there is a resultant increase in yarn prices. This will make the country’s products less competitive in international markets.

Crops worth billions of rupees have been destroyed. The fields saved from the floods are vulnerable to pest attacks. If it were not for the floods, Pakistan would have had a higher cotton production this year. Multan and surrounding areas in Punjab province are on high alert as the Chenab river continues to surge south at extremely high levels. Multan, one of Pakistan's largest cities, is surrounded by vast tracts of agricultural land and is one of the country's major cotton producers.

The downpour this year has come at the end of the monsoon season, and its severity has been restricted to the Himalayan region of Kashmir. Much of this water fed into the Chenab river sending down its worst floods since 1992. The people that had colonised those parts of the river bed that had turned dry over the last two decades are those most affected by the deluge.