Textile minister urged to intervene in CCI cotton sale

The Southern India Mills Association on January 13 urged Union textile minister Smriti Irani to intervene in the Cotton Corporation of India trading policies and direct it to avoid holding cotton and sell it at market price on a regular basis to arrest price escalation.

SIMA Chairman Ashwin Chandran said that as per market information, over 20 lakh bales of cotton have already been exported from the current crop and export might touch 60 lakh bales as against 50 lakh estimated by Cotton Advisory Board.

If the same trend continues, it may result in panic situation in the Indian cotton market, he said in a statement.

In view of this, Chandran urged the minister to instruct CCI to sell the cotton at market price so that spinning mills could procure the cotton at a competitive price.

He pointed out that mills were not able to source cotton from CCI as the price they quoted was exorbitantly high at Rs 46,000 as base price against the market price of Rs 40,000 per candy of 355 kg.

He also said industry friendly cotton trading policy by CCI would not only facilitate mitigating the current challenges, but also would enable the industry grab the market opportunities in the aftermath of US and China holding talks to end the trade war shortly.

As the China-US trade war was likely to end and also since China's cotton reserves had depleted significantly in the last few years, he said China has geared up to import huge volume of cotton from USA and India, the largest cotton producing countries in the world.