The State government has asked the Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) to step up procurement of the fibre crop produce and has directed the Marketing Department to scale up arrangements at purchase centres by providing more moisture measuring meters to enable speedy transactions since the arrivals are expected to increase in the coming weeks.
In a teleconference conducted on Monday, the Marketing Department officials stated that about 93% of arrivals were of quality cotton with the specified moisture content. Agriculture Production Commissioner C. Parthasarathi said the arrivals at the procurement centres would increase as the price of cotton in the open market was ruling below the minimum support price (MSP) of ₹5,550 per quintal for long staple varieties which are raised in the State. The cotton market committee secretaries, district marketing officials, CCI branch managers, regional deputy directors and joint directors of marketing participated in the teleconference.
Director of Marketing G. Laxmibai said about 7,91,598 quintals of cotton has been procured so far by the CCI through 252 purchase centres set up in the purview of 101 market committees. On payments to farmers in lieu of cotton sales, she said against ₹405 crore worth purchases, ₹150 crore was already credited into the bank accounts of the farmers concerned.
Mr. Parthasarathi told the field officials to ensure completion of purchase proceedings of the entire quantity of cotton arrivals every day at the procurement centres so that farmers were not made to stay put at the centres with their produce. Further, he asked the purchase centre in-charges to forward the ‘takk pattis’ (farmer-wise procured cotton quantity details) to the CCI branch managers concerned at the end of day’s transactions every day so that they could make arrangements for timely credit of money against the cotton sale proceeds into the bank accounts of farmers.
Onion price
On the spiralling onion price, Mr. Parthasarathi said the State government has requested the Centre to send 500 tonnes of onion to Telangana to provide some relief to consumers. He said the wholesale traders of onion have agreed to sell onion at ₹40 a kg through special counters to be set up at Mehdipatnam and Saroornagar Rythu Bazaars from Wednesday.
