Textile mills in Telangana run out of cotton

Textile mills in Telangana are running out of cotton stock. The raw material stocks at many of the 32 mills are barely enough for ten days, said Sushil Sancheti, treasurer of Telangana Spinning & Textile Mills Association (TSTMA).

The association president R.K.Agarwal said that making them sound the alarm bells is not as much the inventory as the limited stocks put up for sale by CCI. There is a huge mismatch between the requirement of mills all over India and the supply offered by CCI.

The Centre’s nodal agency to undertake price support operations whenever kapas (seed cotton) price hovers around the support level, the Corporation is holding 83 lakh bales of cotton. For four months from November it did not sell and when it began last month the sale nationwide was limited to 3,000-5,000 bales a day.

Raw material crisis is likely to spell doom for thousands of their workers unless the Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) bails them out with more bales.

While, Cotton Corporation of India chairman BK Mishra has insisted there is no scarcity of the fibre in the domestic market. The market is facing a shortage of cotton is a misnomer. While India is expecting a bumper harvest of 40 million bales in the current year through September, as estimated by the Cotton Advisory Board, exports have crashed due to a slowdown in top buyer China, so there is ample cotton available in the domestic market. said. One bale equals 170 kg.

According to Confederation Of Indian Textile Industry chairman Prem Malik, some states like Andhra Pradesh, Telengana and Maharashtra, the CCI has bought large quantities through MSP operations. There is a shortage of cotton in these states at present and the local mills are forced to get cotton from distant places, incurring additional transportation and other costs.

Holding of huge stocks by the CCI are pushing up the prices and private traders are taking advantage of the situation because of “the perception that non-disposal of cotton by the CCI would drive up the fibre rates even further.