At its earlier meeting, CAB had placed the cotton crop for the current season at 175 lakh bales (including loose cotton consumption estimated at 6.25 lakh bales. However, the meeting of the All India Cotton Trade Associations which was held here on January 23, 1999 has already pulled down the crop estimate to 165.50 lakh bales.

The views of trade circles seem to be widely divided on the subject at present. Normally, the crop should influence prices. However, the crop estimates are now being surprisingly changed on the basis of price variations leading to complete confusion on the subject. The Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had announced some time back theestablishment of a national crop forecasting agency, but no such organisation has come out so far with any cotton crop estimate for the current season.

The Union agriculture ministry seems to be toying with a ridiculously low crop estimate of just 140 lakh bales. No one else however supports its forecast which suffers from several shortcomings. What is worse, the agriculture ministry does not bother even at the end of the end of the season to reconcile its forecast with the actual arrivals as reflected in the ginning and pressing statistics.

This creates a strange situation under which the crop, according to it, can be lower than the figures of such actual receipts. The CAB had earlier projected that mill consumption of cotton this season may be 144 lakh bales and the meeting of the All India Cotton Trade Associations endorsed that estimate, but according to some observers of the cotton scenario, the mill-offtake this season may be just around 138 lakh bales, if one goes by the fact that since February1998 the monthly cotton consumption of cotton by mills has been generally somewhat below 11.50 lakh bales, as the industry is passing through very difficult times. The CAB had projected imports at two lakh bales and exports at five lakh bales. however, actual shipments have been very poor so far and it is therefore, doubtful whether export projections will materialise.

On the other hand according to trade sources, imports bookings have already reached 6-7 lakh bales and actual arrivals of foreign cotton are said to have already crossed two lakh bales. The Cotton Advisory Board has earlier predicted consumption of 6.50 lakh bales of cotton by small spinners and 10 lakh bales by the non-mill sector. These estimates have however attracted considerable criticism as they are purely ad hoc and no convincing efforts are seen to be made to place these projections on a more realistic basis. uIt is anybody's guess what will be the size of the end season stock. Some observers, however, believe that the country mightbe nursing at the end of the season an unwieldy stock of over 40 lakh bales of domestic cotton, unless the crop declines substantially below the estimate of 165.50 lakh bales given out by the All India Cotton Trade Associations.