India's textile organisations differ on cotton production estimate

Last week, CAI retained the cotton crop estimate for the 2022-23 season at 311.18 lakh bales. The conclusion has come after detailed discussion and reports from state organisations, CAI said. It was also mentioned that a total of 332.30 lakh bales of cotton were available from October 2022 to July 2023. 

However, SIMA chairman Ravi Sam stated that the underestimation of crop size has impacted the cotton market, increasing the cotton price by ₹3,000 per candy of 356 kg within a few days. He pointed out that the cotton arrival, according to the Cotton Corporation of India, has already exceeded 318 lakh bales for the 2022-23 season, whereas CAI projected the crop size as 311.18 lakh bales and the arrival as only 296.8 lakh bales. 

Ravi Sam opined that CAI might be projecting the estimate of the ginning production as the country's crop size and therefore felt that CAI's estimate could be ignored by stakeholders and that they should rely only on the COCPC estimate, as per SIMA’s statement. 

The SIMA chief stated that COCPC has estimated the opening stock as 39.48 lakh bales (as against the CAI estimate of 24 lakh bales), the crop size as 343.47 lakh bales (as against the CAI estimate of 311.18 lakh bales), consumption as 295 lakh bales, exports as 30 lakh bales (as against the CAI estimate of 16 lakh bales), and the closing stock as 51.95 lakh bales (as against the CAI estimate of 23.18 lakh bales). 

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (KUL)