Cotton procurement hits Rs 14,654 cr in about two months

The Centre has procured cotton worth Rs 14,654 crore in the first two months of the current marketing year that started on October 1, which has benefitted 9.63 lakh farmers. These farmers have already received Rs 11,799 crore in their bank accounts this year, Union textile minister Smriti Irani said on Friday.

Cotton procurement had stood at a record Rs 28,500 crore in the last marketing year (2019-20), recording a leap from just Rs 90 crore in 2013-2014.

The government is also firming up a Rs 10,000-crore production linked incentive (PLI) scheme for man-made textiles. “The government will shortly announce a textile policy, a policy to be made after two decades. We will roll out a structured PLI scheme for the textile sector,” Irani said at an Assocham event.

She said with India giving leverage to the use of technology in agriculture and laying down a path for digitising transaction, there has come a huge opportunity for wider marketing that can realise the potential of increasing cotton production from the current 4-5 lakh bales to 50 lakh bales a year. This can jack up the textile business to $ 80 billion from the present $18 billion.

The impact on the industry would be huge if the leveraged agricultural sector is conjoined with it.

She said initially there were doubts from the international community on India’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The textile industry rose up to the occasion and reoriented its manufacturing processes to meet the demand of PPE kits. Even the MSME sector, which lacked finances for reorienting their manufacturing procedures, came forward to manufacture PPE kits.