India's CCI to directly buy cotton from Rajasthan farmers

Cotton will be procured directly from farmers in Rajasthan by the Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) at the minimum support price (MSP) in the next cotton season with payments made to their accounts. 

Rajasthan is the first cotton-growing state in north India to make direct transaction mandatory for procurement at MSP. The new cotton season starts in October.

Earlier, much of the cotton purchased by the CCI came through middlemen or aggregators in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan, with farmers not getting the government-set MSP.

Over 12,000 farmers have been registered in Shree Ganganagar district and process is under way in the Hanumangarh and Bhilwara districts, a top Indian daily quoted an unnamed CCI official as saying.

The Indian Government had recently raised the MSP on medium-staple fibre cotton by 28 per cent to ₹5,150 per quintal and long-staple by 26 per cent to ₹5,450.

Traders expect that the hike would help firm up prices in India compared to the last season, when those were lower compared with the global market. The CCI has started arrangements for ginning and storage of cotton for the ensuing harvesting season.

CCI estimates cotton availability for the 2017-18 season will be 416 lakh bales of 170 kg each. This includes an opening stock of 36 lakh bales.