Indian textiles sector needs to refocus and concentrate on value addition. Textile industry in India is in distress due to sluggishness in yarn uptake by the upstream sectors.
Browsing: cotton prices
Rising cotton prices are set to hit profit margins of textile and apparel players due to their inability to pass on the high production cost on to consumers as seasonal demand is weak.
The International Cotton Advisory Committee’s Secretariat has forecast that the A Index in 2017-18 will range between 54 cts/lb and 87 cts/lb with a midpoint of 69 cts/lb. The midpoint would be 13 cts/lb lower than in 2016/17. This follows the large increase of 12 cts/lb from 2015-16 to 2016-17, which suggests that such a drop is not unreasonable.
In order to ensure availability of cotton for domestic mills, the Indian Government had directed Cotton Corporation of India Ltd to sell its stock of cotton (cotton season 2015-16), purchased under MSP, to spinning mills in the micro small medium enterprise (MSME) category to contain fluctuation in cotton prices.
Farmers and agriculture experts in Punjab are expecting a major increase in the area under cotton cultivation this season. The Punjab Agriculture Department has set a target of 4 lakh hectares to be brought under cotton cultivation in eight districts of the Malwa belt.
Following a 35 per cent increase in cotton prices in 2015, Brazilian cotton prices continued to rise in 2016, in which they grew 22.6 per cent over 2015. Cotton prices were primarily driven by low cotton supply in the local market from an unexpected crop failure in the 2015-16 season, while firm demand also pushed up quotes in the last four months.
As the cotton season (October 2015 to September 2016) comes to an end and cotton prices have shot up to nearly Rs 50,000 a candy, textile industry associations from different parts of the country met the Union Textile Minister Smriti Irani in New Delhi.