Indian Texpreneurs Federation (ITF), an apex body of textile industry, today expressed confidence that cotton prices will come down and the speculative price increase during last week is not not sustainable.

Though there are issues in the ‘quality of crop’ in the current cotton year in a few states, overall, there will not be much drop in cotton crop in this year, ITF Convenor, Prabhu Dhamodharan said.

Accusing some section of trade of creating panic, as usual, to increase the prices by spreading specific negative information about cotton crop (20 per cent facts and 80 per cent exaggeration), Prabhu said that still 80 percent of the crop is yet to reach the market.

“This translates to the tune of nearly three crore bales and this massive supply will balance pricing pressure in the coming weeks,” he said, citing ITF field reports.

So we strongly believe that the price increase this week in cotton to the tune of Rs. 1500 per candy will not sustain and only a short term speculative increase, Prabhu said adding that ITF has advised its members also to plan for import of cotton needed for two months of the mills consumption this cotton year to mitigate the risk.

“With our last year import experience, even with Rs. 2000 more cost, mill can get a better cost advantage because of superior quality of imported cotton with less trash and less contamination,” he pointed out.

Apart from this, cotton quality is a big issue in this year here with domestic cotton due to various factors and this impact is already affected by way of drop in realisation levels in spinning mills, which is leading to straight two to three per cent increase in manufacturing cost at yarn stage, he said.

A 15 member delegation from ITF cotton team is making a visit to two important cotton growing states again in the coming week to meet partner ginners to workout an action plan for the current year, Prabhu added.