NEW DELHI, THURSDAY, 14th JUNE 2018: CITI has estimated the production of Indian cotton crop for the cotton season 2017-18 at 373 lakh bales (170 kg each) which is estimated to be 8.11% higher from the previous year because of the increase in area under cotton cultivation by almost 13% i.e. from 108.45 lakh hectares to 122.59 lakh hectares.
Shri Sanjay K Jain, Chairman CITI stated that the estimated balance-sheet for 2017-18 shows production as 373 lakh bales, imports at 15 lakh bales and exports at 70 lakh bales. Further consumption is estimated to be 316 lakh bales (including non mill consumption of 19 lakh bales) against 306 lakh bales in 2016-17.
He also opined that the high prices of cotton domestically and internationally would further force the consumption to either remain stagnant or slightly at the lower side. Hence, consumption figures should not exceed beyond 316 lakh bales (including the non-mill consumption of 19 lakh bales). Even the figure of 316 lakh bales is already higher than the estimate of cotton consumption of 309 lakh bales based upon the consumption of first seven months for the cotton season 2017-18 as reported by the Textile Commissioner. The consumption of last season 2016-17 was 306 lakh bales (including the non-mill consumption of 17.50 lakh bales). CITI has arrived at this conclusion after doing extensive analysis on the production of yarn data reported by the office of the Textile Commissioner from October 2017 to April 2018, export figures and feedback from its member mills spread across the country.
Shri Sanjay K Jain also pointed out that CITI has kept the Opening Stock of Cotton for 2017-18 at 47.81 lakh bales as decided by the Cotton Advisory Board in its meeting on December 12th, 2017. He opined as this figure was arrived after 2 months of the Opening Stock date i.e. October 1, 2017 there was no need to revisit the figure. The opening stock figure was arrived by CAB after considering the balance sheet of last year (2016-17); actual number of mills stock available with the TXC office as on 1st October 2017; stock with CCI as on 30th Sept 2017 and estimated stock with trade as on 1st October 2017.
Thus, the Closing Stock will be around 49.81 lakh bales which is quite sufficient for the textile sector to smoothly run their units throughout the year. There has been a lot of rumours that the recent increase in cotton prices in India is due to shortage of cotton. However, Mr Jain stated that this increase was due to the recent increase in cotton prices across the globe (led by China and USA weather fears impacting the 2018-19 crop size negatively). It has nothing to do with the shortage of cotton as feared by many. To give a better perspective, if we see increase in ZCE, Cotlook A and MCX since 1st April 2018 till date, the increase is 14%, 12% and 13%, respectively which clearly shows that Indian prices are just in line with global price movements. Further it’s heartening that a normal Monsoon is predicted and hence we can expect an equally good crop as 2017-18 in 2018-19.
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(Dr. S. Sunanda)
Secretary General