In a positive move, the Indian Ministry of Textiles has devised a plan to execute direct transfer of funds to cotton farmers’ accounts, on an experimental basis, if the price of cotton drops below the Minimum Support Price (MSP).
Arvi taluk, Wardha District of Maharashtra will be the first taluk where the initial stage of the project will be rolled out, says the Textile Commissioner, Kavita Gupta.
About the plan, she revealed, “We are evolving a mechanism to make the payment directly to the farmers. We are still working on procedural modalities.”
The funds needed by the State Government to be paid to the farmers will be provided by the Ministry of Textiles and the Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) will get into MSP operations as per the requirement of the cotton-growing states.
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This move by the Central Government has been welcomed by The Southern India Mills’ Association (SIMA), which said that it will benefit the Indian textile industry.
K. N. Viswanathan, Vice-President of Indian Cotton Federation said, “The daily arrival of cotton currently is about 1.60 lakh bales as against nearly 1.4 lakh bales during this period last year. Presently, the prices are maintained at about the MSP in most places.”
It may be noted that during the last cotton season, the industry ended up paying higher prices for cotton, especially the textile mills in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh despite the fact that though these are cotton-producing states.
M. Senthil Kumar, Chairman, SIMA averred, “China has a system for direct payment of benefits to farmers and the Chinese spinning mills have benefited from it.”