Ministry of Textiles to draft cotton security policy to make India a cotton surplus nation

India, as a major cotton producer, consumer and exporter, with shortage and price instability for raw cotton going on at global level which is likely to continue over next few years, it becomes extremely important and urgent to draw up cotton security policy.

Ministry of Textiles has propose to devise a cotton security policy to avoid any misuse of domestic supply across the textile value chain and make India a cotton surplus nation by next decade. The execution of the policy has been planned in the new plan period 2016-17 as the cotton production is expected to reach 475 lakh bales by the end of the 12th plan period as per a ballpark estimate of the Ministry.

This policy will be drafted in consultation with the Prime Ministers’ Economic Advisory Council, ministry of finance, ministry of agriculture and ministry of commerce and industry.

According to the ministry of textile as for the year 2014-15, although India’s cotton production will be about 45 million bales which is growing at about 5 percent and yarn production at more than 10 percent, it consumption is likely to increase to 430 lakh bales. Thus there will be a mismatch in availability of extra long staple cotton.

It becomes considerable necessary that there are policies to promote the production of genetically modified cotton and other organic fibres like suvin and ELS (extra long staple) cotton.

The Ministry also feels the need of a special subsidy package on the ground level to support long duration crops like organic and suvin cotton. Suvin cotton is the only commercially available fibre with spin ability of around 240s count and it current production is around 300 metric tonnes or around 1250 bales which has gradually reduced over the years.

Similarly, organic cotton fibre which is extremely crucial to Indian agronomy is also seeing its production dwindling.