The Indian Cotton Federation (ICF), originally known as the South India Cotton Association, conducted its 45th Annual General Meeting at GKS Cotton Chambers recently.
J. Thulasidharan was re-elected as President of ICF for 2024–2025. Adhitya Krishna Pathy and P. Nataraj were re-elected as vice presidents. ICF will continue to have Nishanth A. Asher and Chetan H. Joshi serving as its Honourary Secretary and Honourary Joint Secretary, respectively.
The fall in textile demand, according to J. Thulasidharan, made the previous fiscal year the most difficult one during the AGM. The industry expects cotton yields to increase, and reports indicate that good yields are anticipated in the 2024–25 season.
The input from the block level and the current accurate estimate clearly suggest that the amount of cotton crop will be significantly higher than the previous season, 2023–2024. Physically speaking, the volume won’t be smaller and will, at most, range from 330 to 340 lakh bales. Farmers now have a more progressive attitude on growing production while maintaining quality and free of contamination thanks to the different incentives and increase in MSP, he said.
He also mentioned that due to the import tax on cotton, raw material prices in India are currently higher than global pricing. In this regard, the Government had to offer a remedy to the farmers as well as the industry. It was underlined that for the business to expand, financing with lower interest rates and raw material security are essential.
According to Thulasidharan, Union Textile Minister Giriraj Singh had pledged to investigate the parity of cotton pricing with respect to the world market and to reintroduce the new strain of BT in order to boost yield. This was said by the minister during the July meeting of the Textile Advisory Group (TAG), which Nishanth Asher was present at.
For the textile and spinning industries to operate on level playing fields, the Government will need to take a leading role. In order to address important concerns like pricing volatility, supply chain bottlenecks, and trade obstacles, there must also be interaction with policy makers. ICF will keep pushing for laws that help business, trade, and farmers, said Asher.
The major request to the Union Government from ICF was to remove Import Duty on Cotton. “Raw material (cotton) prices in India are higher than the world’s prices because of the import duty, so once that import duty is removed it will give a level playing field. We request the government to remove the import duty and rationalize it so the Indian textile industry can grow,” he added.
