Coimbatore : The Southern India Mills Association (SIMA) Tuesday thanked Union Textile Minister Smriti Zubin Irani for the intervention, enabling Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) to offer volume based bulk discounts for its 2018-19 cotton and protecting the interests of MSME spinning mills by offering the discounts from 500 bales and restricting the same at 10,000 bales.

The discount ranged from Rs.3,200 to Rs.4,400 per candy of 355 kgs and CCI has quoted Rs.46,400 per candy for 30 mm cotton of fair average quality while the current market price was around Rs.40,500, SIMA Chairman, Ashwin Chandran said in a statement here.

Considering the free lifting period and quality claimed by CCI for its cotton, the prices would come closer to the market prices and mills might commence procurement from CCI, he said.

He expressed hope that CCI would soon offer its current year Minimum Support Cotton at market prices at constant intervals till season end and facilitate stability in cotton prices.

Stating that CCI had earlier offered attractive bulk discounts and free period up to 120 days facilitating multinational cotton traders to garner the cotton and speculate the prices during off-season, he appreciated the bold decision of the present Smrithi Irani to abolish such discounts during 2017 to stabilise the cotton prices, protect the interests of the actual users of cotton especially the MSME spinning segment and its downstream sectors.

Ashwin Chandran appealed to the Government to include cotton yarn under various export benefits such as interest subvention and refund of embedded blocked taxes and levies), to make Indian cotton yarn which attracts considerable tariff in all the export markets, globally competitive and thereby boost exports.

Cotton yarn export from India has dropped around 30 percent during the year 2019-20 when compared to the previous year, he said adding that increased yarn exports will stimulate demand for cotton which in turn would also help the Government to reduce the losses on account of MSP as CCI is on track to procure upto 100 lakh bales of cotton during the current cotton season.

The industry has been pleading with the Textiles ministry to sell the cotton at market prices to have stability in the cotton market and protect the interests of the spinning mills and its downstream power loom and hand loom sectors, Ashwin Chandran said.