Cotton ginning and pressing units, traders, and cotton user industries will have to register with the Office of the Textile Commissioner and submit information on cotton stocks with them every month.
The Union Ministry of Textiles issued a notification (dated February 27, 2013) in this regard. Explaining the notification, Joint Textile Commissioner O.M. Prabhakaran said that “we do not have proper assessment of the cotton situation because of lack of information.”
All the stakeholders in the cotton sector would benefit by providing data. It would help prepare a realistic cotton balance sheet. The software for the registration would be ready soon and the stakeholders would be able to register online or manually with the Regional Offices of the Textile Commissioner. Filing of data, however, would be only online and the stakeholders would be able to do so from July. “From the next cotton season, which will start in October, we will have a stable database,” he said.
There were penal provisions under the Collection of Statistics Act 2008 under which action could be taken on those who do not submit the information, he said.
