Textile mills in Telangana are running out of cotton, creating a raw material crisis that will spell doom for thousands of their workers unless the Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) bails them out with more bales.
“The raw material stocks at many of the 32 mills are barely enough for ten days,” says Sushil Sancheti, treasurer of Telangana Spinning & Textile Mills Association (TSTMA).
Making them sound the alarm bells is not as much the inventory as the limited stocks put up for sale by CCI. “There is a huge mismatch between the requirement of mills all over India and the supply offered by CCI,” the association president R.K.Agarwal says.
Sale stopped
The Centre’s nodal agency to undertake price support operations whenever kapas (seed cotton) price hovers around the support level, the Corporation is holding 83 lakh bales of cotton. For four months from November it did not sell and when it began last month the sale nationwide was limited to 3,000-5,000 bales a day, Mr.Agarwal says.
