The Hindu Business Line : Cotton Corpn facing space shortage in AP

CCI is also understood to have been facing difficulty with regard to ginning and processing capacity. While the procurement centres are spread out in far-flung areas, the ginning capacity is located in particular belts involving transportation of kapas over long-distances.

NEW DELHI, Feb. 27

EVEN as the Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) has stepped up its efforts to help the Andhra Pradesh farmers through maximum coverage under minimum support price (MSP) procurement operations, the procurement agency under the Ministry of Textiles is faced with ground-level difficulties.

Official sources told Business Line here that the CCI operations to help the farmers bearing the transportation cost wherever necessary, were "riddled'' with some problems.

For instance, the sources said, the Andhra Pradesh Storage and Warehousing Corporation (APSWC) was unable to allot the required space for storage of cotton bales and the CCI was engaging private godowns to meet the storage requirements.

The corporation has to accept godowns on management service basis. . With the slow lifting of cotton bales by textile mills and continuous purchases to last for another two months, storage of bales should remain "a major problem'' and CCI had initiated dialogue with the State authorities to sort out the issue, the sources added.

CCI is also understood to be facing difficulty with regard to ginning and processing (G&P) capacity. While the procurement centres are spread in far-flung areas, the ginning capacity is located in particular belts involving transportation of kapas over long distances.

Due to massive purchases vis-a-vis limited processing capacity available, efforts are under way to book additional ginning capacities wherever possible to overcome the problem.

The sources said the major variety grown in the State this season was Bunny/Brahma. It is a new variety and comparatively lesser known to textile mills about its spinning values. Despite this it has been difficult to sell stocks covered under MSP in view of subdued demand and declining lint prices.

Lint prices are on the downtrend since November 2001 and it had come down roughly by Rs 1,000 per candy. The opening prices of Rs 16,700/16,800 per candy for 30-mm cotton had fallen to Rs 15700/15800.

The sources said that due to global recession, there was little export demand; but CCI was able to sell some quantity in Bangladesh.

The new B/B variety is slowly gaining acceptance with buyers and so far 10,500 bales have been sold in Bangladesh. But sales to Bangladesh had been affected due to the four per cent purchase tax. Exemption on this score would definitely help boost exports and the State Government is considering this.

Andhra Pradesh is one of the major cotton growing States, accounting for 10-11 per cent of the total area under crop and 17-18 per cent of the total production.

Due to adequate rains and favourable climatic conditions in the current season, the area under cotton has increased to 10.01 lakh hectares with expected production at 27 lakh bales during 2001-02 (October to September).

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