The Hindu Business Line : Mills in a spin over rising cotton prices

Coimbatore, Feb. 11 Instead of heaving a sigh of relief about the bumper cotton production during the current season, the powerloom, made-up, handloom, open-end spinning and coarser count producing spinning sector in the South are upset with the spiralling prices and severe shortage of the short staple fibre and cotton waste across the country.

Mill sources say that the bumper crop has not really helped the domestic textile industry as the prices of short staple varieties and waste cotton (comber noil and flat strips) used by the open-end spinning units had gone up to unreasonable levels.

Varieties such as J34, V 797, F 414 are cultivated in the North. Due to the rising transportation cost and the introduction of Bt in varieties, the length of the staple fibre has improved, but the cost of the raw material has become unaffordable. It is uneconomical for the units in the southern region to produce coarser counts out of this cotton, say industry sources.

SIMA has sought Government intervention to save the industry from its present imbroglio by exempting the import duty on short staple cotton varieties and reducing the import duty to 5 per cent on all other varieties, exempting cotton from Special Additional Duty of 4 per cent, withdrawing duty drawback on cotton, exempting cotton from CST and VAT and cotton cone yarn from VAT.

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