The Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) should once again be asked to play the price stabilization role, in addition to the support price role, The Cotton Textiles Export Promotion Council of India (Texprocil) has said.
Addressing a press conference, the outgoing chairman of Texprocil, Manikam Ramaswami, said the Indian textile industry is internally an extremely competitive industry, and it needs its raw materials at equal or less than International prices and needs a level playing field in tariff barriers.
According to Mr. Ramaswami, a cotton surplus country like India should at all times have lower than international prices, but in reality every year after February; Indian prices go above global prices and remain so until the new crop arrives in October. It is at this time that the share of Indian yarn in China’s imports drops.
Such a situation can be avoided if the CCI plays a price stabilization role and buys cotton from the farmers, whenever Indian prices are lower than International prices. Subsequently, the CCI can release the cotton to the mills the moment the domestic prices reach the international level.
"It would help the farmers make more profits, will stabilize the operations of mills and help maintain our international competitiveness in manufactured products. Traders will compete on an equal footing, and not be able to create the current distortions in prices by buying when prices are cheaper and exporting it to our competitors,” said Mr. Ramaswami.
Given that India suffers very high relative duties into all markets, the Government needs to use the Focus schemes as per the stated policy transparently and give textile exports the highest incentives that it rightly deserves as per the stated policy on incentives, he also said.
Texprocil, an autonomous, nonprofit body dedicated to promotion of exports, has a membership of around 3,500 manufacturers and exporters of cotton textile products like cotton, yarn, fabrics and home textiles.
For the year 2014-15, RK Dalmia of Century Textiles and Industries, Ujwal Lahoti of Lahoti Overseas Ltd., and KV Srinivasan of Premier Mills Pvt Ltd. have been elected chairman, deputy chairman and vice chairman of Texprocil, respectively. (GK)
