Coimbatore : Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI) Thursday welcomed the launch of National Brand for Cotton “Kasturi” – the first Indian cotton brand, saying that this will help Indian textile manufacturers and exporters to draw better price realisation on their cotton products in the international markets.

“Indian exporters at present do not get better prices on the cotton products due to poor quality of cotton fibre and contaminated cotton,” CITI Chairman T Rajkumar said in a statement here.

The launching of the Indian cotton brand by the textile minister, Smriti Irani will enable the Indian cotton value chain to improve the cotton quality and emerge as one of the best in the world and facilitate in producing high value-added products out of the same to sustain the growth, he said.

Rajkumar also pointed out that India accounts for 38 per cent of the world area under cotton and the ongoing measures and various initiatives taken by the Government to improve productivity, quality and branding of Indian cotton and its products across the value chain will have a bright future and make Indian cotton globally competitive.

The World Cotton Day is more relevant for India as there has been a 25 to 30 per cent drop in cotton consumption across the global as well as in India due to Covid-19 pandemic.

He also stated that excess cotton stock to the tune of three to four times of normal stock level would be a challenge for India and our Ministry is already taking necessary steps to boost the exports of all products across the value chain apart from increasing the consumption domestically. For example, cotton face mask and cotton lining materials in PPE and increased medical textiles consumption have thrown very good opportunity for India, he said.

Rajkumar appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to announce the Technology Mission on Cotton in a revised format with the Mission Mode approach that has already been recommended by the Textiles minister.

“The textile industry was committed to undertake cotton contract farming especially for ELS (extra long staple) cotton; several leading groups are already on the job and many more have shown interest to venture into contract farming on ELS cotton”.