Gujarat government’s spokesperson and senior minister Shri Jaynarayan Vyas speaks on cotton ban imposed by the centre

Gandhinagar, 5 March 2012

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi has in a letter today urged the Prime Minister to forthwith lift ban, suddenly imposed on cotton exports with a doubly malicious intention of forcing farmers to distress sale and at the same time creating an artificial shortage of the commodity.

He demanded that the Central Government should permanently lift ban on export of the superior ‘Shankar’ variety of cotton, looking to its great demand in the international market, and particularly China.

Mr. Modi in an angry note strongly protested the Central Government’s annual dubious and deliberate exercise of banning export just before the harvest season in India when international prices rule high, thereby forcing the farmers to sell cotton at even lower than Minimum Support Price (MSP). And by the time the cotton prices fall in the global market, he said, the Centre lifts the ban, making Indian raw cotton uncompetitive.

Since cotton growers in India do not have efficient means to stock the commodity, he said, they have to perforce depend on the whims and fancy of the traders.

The Chief Minister said that this is done to help the Centre’s nexus with certain textiles mills and cotton yarn manufacturers. These mills should have an outstanding stock of 52-lakh bales of raw cotton at the beginning of the season, but they show it to be just 27-lakh bales, using their proximity to the powers that be to mischievously demand ban on export so that they could buy raw cotton at cheap prices.

Even as cotton production is expected to be around 365-lakh bales this year, Gujarat’s production alone is likely to go up to 116-lakh bales against 98 lakhs last year. While Gujarat is the largest cotton producing state in the country, Mr. Modi pointed that the UPA Government’s action smacks of singling out and hitting the farmers of Gujarat the most. Last year, the cotton growers of Gujarat had to bear a whopping loss of Rs.14,000-crore on account of the Centre’s anti-farmers policy.

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