Indian Texpreneurs Federation (ITF) has suggested the need to bring in reforms in Cotton Corporation India (CCI), in view of textile ministry directing it to sell cotton only to end users like Spinning mills.

Since the directive will give a great boost to “Make in India” policy, a fresh study should be carried out to know how Indian textile industry can use CCI for its benefit and bring n reforms to suit today’s changing global environment, ITF Secretary, Prabhu Dhamodaran said.

Stating that many in the industry strongly believed that CCI selling cotton to traders was also leading to speculation of prices and availability, Prabhu said that the ministry has taken a right direction to support millions of farmers and also industry, which is giving employment to millions of workers.

With such a technological advancement, India still does not have any scientific system to collect data on cotton cultivation and production, he said adding that steps should be taken to develop a strong scientific methodology to collect data on cotton and publish on a monthly basis.

This will help farmers and industry in a great way and stabilise cotton economy as a whole and help textile exports in a big way, Prabhu said. India, being the leading producer of cotton in the world should use the home grown cotton in its favor of manufacture and export value added products.

But, being a seasonal commodity, many in the trade are creating speculation, which leads to artificial price rise in middle and end of the cotton season on a yearly basis.

There was 35 per cent increase in cotton prices in the last 80 days in India, whereas world cotton was available 23 per cent cheaper than it, Prabhu said

Thanking textile minister, Smriti Irani for issuing the directive, ITF requested her to take measures to make a new study towards two important aspects of cotton economy in continuation of the directive to strengthen further and drive cotton textile manufacturing sector towards growth.