Banikinkar Pattanayak
New Delhi, Jan 21
The state-run Cotton Advisory Board (CAB) will meet on Wednesday to firm up cotton estimates amid wide expectations of a possible downward revision of the fibre's production for the marketing year through September. The meeting is being held for the first time after a major restructuring of the CAB earlier this year. For the first time in around 63 years, the government has recast the CAB by segregating the consulatation process from finalizing estimates of cotton production, consumption, exportable surplus and yearending stocks. While the restructured CAB would comprise officials of textile as well as agriculture ministries and state governments, the consulatative body would be represented by mainly executivesof thetextileindustry and traders. Prior to this, CAB was one body, consisting of government officials and representatives of the textile industry.
Both CAB and the consultativebodywillbeheadedby the textile commissioner. While traders feel the recast of is an attempt to undermine their role, a senior official said: "The policy is a genuine path-breaker as it kills the stranglehold of vested interests on crop data, which is the very basis of all policy and commercial decisions." Other officials said cotton is the only commodity where the industry and traders still have some say. Cotton arrivals tumbled by 6.4% until January 13 since the marketing year started on October 1 to 12.15 million bales on a 37% drop in supplies from the largest producer Gujarat, which may prompt CAB to trim its output forecast of 33.4 million bales announced in October. This was was still 5.4% lower than 2011-12, according to industry experts The CAB, in its last estimate, pegged exportable surplus of cotton at 7 million bales, 45% lower than the actual exports of 12.9 million bales in 2011-12. (Source: Financial Express)