Coimbatore : Indian Cotton Federation (ICF) here has finalised the cotton crop estimate for 2018-19 at 373 lakh bales of 170 kg each

Cotton Advisory Board, which surveys and announces the crop situation had not met for a long time and in the absence of an official estimate or report, there was a great amount of uncertainty regarding the crop situation, creating hardship for trade and the spinning Industry, ICF president, J Thalasidharan said.

Many sources were giving lower crop estimates and ICF made a detailed study and arrived at 373 lakh bales for the season. For the cotton crop year 2018-19, ICF recorded highest acreage and seed sales were close to 5 lakh packets. Further, a few pockets in Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat had received sufficient rains, he said.

There has been no major pest menace and the pink boll worm was well controlled .

With the present estimate production and import 18 lakh bales, the total supply for the current season would be 434 lakh bales. The total demand would be 320 lakh bales for mills and 60 lakh bales for raw cotton export, leaving 54 lakh bales as carryover stock, he added.