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THE TEXTILE ADVISORY GROUP CONSTITUTED BY THE MINISTRY OF TEXTILE UNDER THE CHAIRMANSHIP OF SHRI SURESH KOTAK

Published: May 30, 2022

Author: DIGITAL MEDIA EXECUTIVE

The first interactive meeting of the Textile Advisory Group held today was Chaired by Shri Piyush Goel, Hon’bleMinister of Textiles and Textile Secretary, Textile Commissioner, Joint Secretary (Fibre), Joint Secretary (Seeds), Ministry of Agriculture and other officials from Ministry Textiles and Ministry of Agriculture also attended the meeting.
Mr T Rajkumar, Chairman CITI, Mr Manojkumar Patodia, Texprocil Chairman, Mr J Thulasidharan, Former Chairman CITI & SIMA and also President, ICF, Mr P D Patodia, Former Chairman, CITI & Texprocil and also Standing Committee on Cotton, CITI CDRA, Dr Sidharth Rajagopal, ED, Texprocil, Mr Nshanth Asher, Hon Secretary, ICF, Chairman, AEPC, CAI, CMAI, Scientists from ICAR, CIRCOT and various other stakeholders participated in the meeting.
Dr K Selvaraju, Secretary General attended the meeting on behalf of SIMA.
Mr Suresh Kotak, Dr C D Mayee and Director (Cotton), State Government of Maharashtra made detailed power point presentations focussing on the challenges faced on cotton front and suggested various policy interventions to mitigate the cotton price issue, increasing the cotton production and productivity and improving the cotton quality.
Mr Suresh Kotak also briefed and appreciated the contributions made by CITI CDRA to improve the production and productivity and also SIMA CDRA’s achievements in ELS cotton seed developments. He proposed forming a Task Force to prepare the report
After detailed deliberations Hon’ble Minister of Textiles took the following decisions:
- Government would not take any decision to benefit one segment at the cost of the other.
- As already announced at the stakeholders’ meeting held on 17^th May 2022, he advised the Ministry to ensure release of notification permitting duty free import of cotton till 31^st December 2022
- Take appropriate action to curb cotton price speculation through MCX
- Contacted Dr. MansukhMandaviya, Hon’ble Minister of Chemicals and Fertilizer,briefed about the urgent need for issuing a notification to use the coloured HDPE bag instead of white bag for packing fertilizers to mitigate the white PPE contamination issue in cottonand advised CITI/Texprocil/SIMA to send a representation to HMOCF and HMOT by 30^th May morning.
- As an immediate measure to control the pink bollworm infestation, HMOT directed:
  - Mandatory installation of pheromone trap and spraying by all the ginning units and cotton seed oil crushers located in all the pink bollworm prone cotton growing areas
  - CCI to provide fund and implement PB Knot pheromone technology
- Advised Textile Commissioner to issue a notification making online filing of Monthly, Quarterly and Annual Statistical Returns with final warning for self compliance failing which making it a precondition for sourcing cotton from CCI and also availing any benefit including TUFS, RoDTEP, etc., from the Ministry of Textilesand also directed CCI to blacklist the ginning units from its purchase that fail to file the online returns in the OTxC portal.
- MoT would facilitate logistics for the import of unsold cotton from Australia, and Tanzania and sort out the issues relating to phytosanitary certificate for importing the US, Brazil and Indian cotton from the Chinese port bonded ware house.
- Streamline the existing seeds, reduce the number of varieties and curb spurious seeds. Educate the farmers to use good quality seeds supplied by the recognised and reputed seed manufacturers.
- As a long term measure, HMOT would make efforts to bring Bollgard3 and other GMO technology to reduce the cost of cotton production and improving the cotton productivity.
- MOA to encourage the appropriate technology including drip irrigation to augment productivity.
- For the implementation of individual bale quality tagging with traceability and producing sustainable cotton, directed TxC to form Committee and submit a proposal to make the major ginning factories to instal HVI cotton testing equipments with Government contributions.