India’s carry-forward cotton stocks for 2025-26 seen at 5 year high of 60.69 lakh bales
India’s cotton carry-forward stocks for the new season 2025-26 starting October are estimated at 60.59 lakh bales of 170 kg each, the highest in five years. Cotton stocks at the beginning of the current 2024-25 season ending September stood at 39.19 lakh bales.
“The increase in closing stocks is mainly on account of higher imports of 41 lakh bales over last year’s 15 lakh bales. Also, the opening stocks are the highest after Covid year 2020-21 during which it was around 120 lakh bales,” Atul S Ganatra, President, Cotton Association of India (CAI), told businessline.
The government has recently removed the 11 per cent import duty on cotton till the year-end to help textiles sector deal with the US tariff issue. “We expect around 20 lakh bales to be imported during the October-December quarter,” Ganatra said.
For the current 2024-25 season, CAI has revised upwards the imports by 2 lakh bales from its earlier projections to 41 lakh bales after the gGovernment removed the import duty. The cotton imports for the 2024-25 season are higher by about 25.80 lakh bales over the previous year’s 15.20 lakh bales. Up to August 31, 36.75 lakh bales are estimated to have arrived at the Indian ports, Ganatra said
For the 2024-25 season, CAI has revised the cotton pressing numbers by one lakh bales to 312.40 lakh bales, based on the latest report submitted by the upcountry associations and trade sources. About 307.09 lakh bales have already arrived till August and balance 5.31 lakh bales are expected during September. The pressing estimates in Maharashtra have been increased by 1 lakh bales to 91 lakh bales, and in Andhra Pradesh by 0.5 lakh bales to 12.5 lakh bales. However, in Telangana, the pressing estimate have been reduced by 0.5 lakh bales to 49 lakh bales.
CAI has maintained the consumption estimate at 314 lakh bales for 2024-25, same as projected previously. The consumption till August was estimated at 286 lakh bales.
The exports for the 2024-25 season are projected at 18 lakh bales, lower by 10.36 lakh bales over previous year’s 28.36 lakh bales.
