Due to rising domestic consumption and excellent exports, India is off to a good start for the 2019 cotton season. Traders believe that the price of kapas (raw unginned seed cotton) will be higher than the government-mandated Minimum Support Price (MSP) of Rs 5,726 per quintal in the coming season.
Cotton bales refer to the ginned and milled product produced by removing seed from raw cotton. Each cotton bale has around 170 kg of ginned cotton and is used by domestic and international makers to make cotton yarns. India will end up exporting around 65-66 lakh bales of cotton for the current season, said Pradeep Jain, founder-chairman of Khandesh Gin/Press.
The Cotton Corporation of India has almost managed to offload the cotton stock it had procured during the last season. P K Agarwal, CMD of the corporation, said of the 92 lakh bales they’d procured, only 8.5 lakhs remain with them. He said given the bullish trend in cotton markets, they do not feel they would need MSP operations.
