India's 2012-13 cotton exports to exceed estimates: USDA

May 17, 2013 (India)

India’s cotton exports for the 2012-13 marketing year ending in July are likely to surpass the earlier estimates of 7.2 million bales of 170 kg each, a recent report of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) says.

 

The report pegs India’s cotton exports at 9.2 million bales during the ongoing marketing season, which would, however, be 34 percent lower than last year’s exports of 14.17 million bales.

 

By April end, India’s cotton export registrations had reached 8.9 million bales, while actual exports exceeded 8.5 million bales, the report said.

 

However, exports for April were considerably low at 200,000 bales as exports to China almost came to a standstill.

 

India’s Cotton Advisory Board (CAB) has upwardly revised the country’s cotton production estimates for the 2012-13 season to 34 million bales from its earlier estimates of 26.5 million bales.

 

By April, the country harvested 29 million bales, which is the same as the quantity of cotton harvested by this time last year, but 3 percent lower than 2010-11’s output, the report titled “Cotton and Products Update April 2013” said.

 

Analysing the demand-supply situation on the basis of CAB data, USDA said consumption remains steady on account of strong demand for yarn from China and Bangladesh.

 

Holding around 2.1 million bales in unsold stock, state-owned Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) initiated the process of releasing the stocks on April 26 this year, by auctioning 25,000 bales.

 

Both the textile industry and the CCI have been urging for releasing the unsold stocks for over weeks, however, the corporation presently it does not have the permission to auction anything in excess of 25,000 bales, USDA said.

 

According to the report, owing to its proximity to leading textile manufacturing area around Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore, almost all of the CCI cotton is in Andhra Pradesh, however there concerns regarding the quality of CCI cotton, it added.

 

USDA cautioned that the longer the time for which CCI clings to these stocks, higher are the probabilities that future auctions would lead to a fall in prices, particularly as farmers are deciding on their crop plantations for 2013-14.

 

It also added that though CCI followed high procurement standards in spite of the damage caused to the crop by the storm that hit Andhra Pradesh last-season, the micronaire value is not as high to please the spinners.