Kotkapura, November 21
As state farmers are holding back their cotton crop due to low prices prevailing in the markets due to heavy imports of the same being done by the textile mill owners, the ginning and pressing mills owners are suffering heavy losses.
Most of the ginning and pressing mills are finding it difficult to meet their overhead expenses due to the shortage of raw material.
Mr B.L. Grover, president of the Cotton Factories Owners Association, Muktsar (now dissolved), while talking to The Tribune, said in Muktsar town, all six ginning and pressing mills had been suffering losses. He said while the pressing and ginning capacity of these mills was about 1,000 bales daily, the arrival of cotton was ranging from 300 to 400 bales daily.
Mr Ajmer Singh, a leading industrialist of the town, said the ginning and pressing industry could not come out of it till the Punjab Government and other government agencies took effective steps in this regard.
He pointed out that the arrival of cotton was very slow as the farmers had been holding back their produce in anticipation that rates of cotton, including narma and desi varieties, would go up in days to come and it was the main reason that mill owners had not been getting adequate raw material.
He further pointed out that earlier, in this town, which was known as the Asia’s biggest cotton market, about 1.5 lakh bales used to arrive in a season but the estimated arrival this season would not be more than 50,000 bales. He said out of the 26 ginning and pressing mills in this town, only four were running at present.
Apart from low arrival, the mill owners have also been suffering losses due the alleged indifferent attitude of the Punjab Government. The Punjab Government has been charging Rs 350 per kilowatt load of electricity from the millers. On an average, each miller, whose unit had a connection of 400 kw had to pay Rs 1.4 lakh every month to the PSEB despite the fact that the mills had been running under capacity due to the repeated crop failure for the past six to seven years.
Mr Pardeep Sharda, another ginning and pressing mill owner of Abohar, said the prices of cotton in Punjab markets had come down considerably due to large imports of the same done by big textile and yarn manufacturers of the country.
A tour to various cotton markets of Bathinda, Muktsar, Ferozepore and Faridkot districts revealed that up to November 9, 2001, only 4.25 lakh bales had arrived in the markets of north India as compared to 9.60 lakh bales which had arrived in the corresponding period last year.
