Coimbatore : With Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) launching the first Indian brand cotton ‘HIRA’, the Southern India Mills Association (SIMA) Wednesday appealed to the Prime Minister to launch the technology Mission on Cotton in a revised format to increase the productivity .

The cotton productivity in India is only around 460 to 500 kgs per hectare as against 1,500 to 2,200 kgs per hectare achieved by over 20 countries in the world, SIMA Chairman, Ashwin Chandran said in a statement here.

Hailing the launch of HIRA by CCI at a function in Mumbai Wednesday, and its plans to market it shortly. Ashwin appreciated Union Textile Minister Smriti Zubin Irani and CCI Chairman-cum-Managing Director Dr P Alli Rani for the historical initiative.

The ministry is also planning to launch a scheme “Nirmal Cotton Mission” with CCI as a nodal agency that would go a long way to make Indian cotton to become the best quality cotton in the world and would enable the Indian cotton textiles and clothing manufacturers to produce all high value added items using home grown cotton, he said.

In this background, Ashwin appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to launch the technology Mission on Cotton in a revised format to increase the productivity paralley which is only around 460 to 500 kgs per hectare as against 1,500 to 2,200 kgs per hectare achieved by over 20 countries.

Adopting global best practices and acquiring appropriate technology would be essential to achieve the mission of doubling the farmers’ income and make India as the true global clothier of cotton textiles, he said.

India became the largest producer of cotton in the year 2014-15 and continue to be the leader by accounting 37 per cent area under cotton.

India produces 330 to 400 lakh bales and consumes 300 to 320 lakh bales of cotton per year thus becoming a net exporter of cotton.

The Technology Mission on Cotton and BT cotton technology helped the country to become the world leader in cotton textile exports.

However, Indian cotton quality has been far below the standard especially in terms of trash content, contamination, that stalled the value addition and also affected the revenue of the cotton farmers, Ashwin noted.