Hindu, India -
M. Soundariya Preetha
COIMBATORE: With the new cotton season (2008-2009) setting in, cotton prices have declined mainly owing to low demand from textile mills.
The prices have declined by about Rs. 4,000 a candy for the Punjab varieties (compared to prices last month) and by 40 per cent for Shankar 6, according to K. N. Viswanathan, secretary of the South India Cotton Association.
Cotton Corporation of India is purchasing 50 to 60 per cent of the arrivals in Punjab since the prices have dipped below the minimum support price. It has started purchasing in Andhra Pradesh and is likely to do so in Maharashtra and Gujarat too. Mr. Viswanathan told The Hindu that the arrivals from Gujarat, Punjab belt, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh total to about 85,000 bales a day and this was on the rise. Cotton production in the country last year (2007-2008 cotton year) was 315 lakh bales and the association estimated it to be 318 lakh to 320 lakh bales this year. “Our estimate is conservative since weather can play a crucial role in the arrivals in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh next month,” he said.
However, currently “there is absolutely no enquiry for cotton export and the domestic mills are unable to support the prices,” he said.
Unviable yarn prices, lack of movement of yarn and the poor buying capacity of the mills were some of the reasons for the low demand.
Exporting companies who had got cotton for November-December delivery were settling the contracts now since the demand was low in the international market too.
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October 18th, 2008
High Plains Journal, KS
Cotton Belt Congressional members joined their colleagues and the U.S. cotton and textile industry in a call to broaden a key textile import monitoring program.
With the strong support of the National Cotton Council, textile associations and a labor union, 73 U.S. Representatives led by Textile Caucus Co-Chairs Howard Coble, R-NC, and John Spratt, D-SC, sent a letter on September 26 to President Bush urging his administration to extend and expand the Textile Monitoring Program to cover U.S. textile and apparel imports from China beginning on Jan. 1, 2009, the first day following the expiration of a U.S.-China textile bilateral agreement signed in 2005.
The TMP currently monitors U.S. apparel imports from Vietnam for illegal dumping.
The National Cotton Council also joined 10 textile and fiber industry trade associations and the labor union UNITE HERE in a letter on Sept. 28 to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez and U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab making the same request.
“U.S. cotton is encouraged by this bipartisan congressional support for stronger trade enforcement,” said Larry McClendon, Marianna, Ark., NCC chairman, a producer and ginner. “Excessive textile and apparel imports disrupt the market and pose a threat to our industry.”
The expiration of Chinese safeguards next year has raised grave concerns among the U.S. textile sectors and its workers, as well as the U.S. preference partners in the CAFTA and African countries that rely on domestic components. To underscore this point, earlier this month, 17 international textile and apparel organizations sent letters to Secretary Gutierrez, Ambassador Schwab and the chairs and ranking members of the U.S. Senate Finance and the U.S. House Ways and Means Committees urging the extension and expansion of the TMP.
Concerns about dumping are not unwarranted, as the expiration of quotas in 2005 resulted in a 40 percent price drop on and a nearly 600 percent volume increase of U.S. textile and apparel imports from China, severely disrupting the market. This led the U.S. government to impose safeguards on numerous categories of U.S. textile and apparel imports from China, which in turn, encouraged the United States and China to negotiate the bilateral that expires at year’s end.
10/20/08
5 Star OK\7-B
Date: 10/16/08
October 18th, 2008