Cotton Purchase at MSP to touches 1cr bales

The progressive procurement of cotton by the State-run Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) at the minimum support price (MSP) has touched 1 crore bales (170 kg each for the 2024-25 marketing season. Telangana tops the list of States where the maximum quantity has been procured, followed by Maharashtra and Gujarat. “One crore bales have been purchased and it is still going on,” said Lalit Kumar Gupta, Chairman cum Managing Director, CCI.As of March 26, CCI had purchased 40.38 lakh bales in Telangana, followed by Maharashtra at 29.34 lakh bales, Gujarat at 14.1 lakh bales and 5.22 lakh bales in Karnataka. In Madhya Pradesh, 3.95 lakh bales have been procured, while in Andhra Pradesh the progressive procurement stood at 3.83 lakh bales of 170 kg each. In Odisha, 2.06 lakh bales have been procured, while in Haryana the purchased quantity stood at 0.61 lakh bales and 0.50 lakh bales in Rajasthan. This year’s cotton procurement by the CCI is the second highest since 201920, when the State run agency procured over 1.05 crore bales. With the procurement figures touching one crore bales of 170 kg each, the CCI has purchased over a third of the cotton produced in the country during the 202425 crop season. The Committee on Cotton Production and Consumption (COCPC), in its recent meeting, reduced the crop estimates for the 202425 season at 294.25 lakh bales of 170 kg each from the earlier projections of 299.26 lakh bales in November last year.

As per the Cotton Association of India (CAI) data, the cumulative market arrivals during the 202425 marketing season till March 29 stood at 244.25 lakh bales. With this, over 82 per cent of the cotton produced during the year has arrived in the market so far. The daily arrival stood at 52,000 bales on Saturday. Raw cotton prices still ruled below MSP levels in some parts of Gujarat and Maharashtra last week. “CCI faces the challenge of selling its raw cotton bales earlier and at better prices. There’s no global support for cotton prices at the moment. Indian spinning mills will eventually need to buy from CCI to meet their annual requirements but they are not in a hurry to do so. Based on current international prices, exporting CCI cotton is not viable. It appears that once private market stocks are depleted, CCI may raise prices to align with imported cotton,” said Anand Popat of Cot yarn Brokers in his weekly note on Sunday.