Cotton Corporation offloads 2.7 lakh bales of cotton

State-run Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) today said it has offloaded 2.7 lakh bales of cotton in the open market through e-auction so far this year.
CCI is offloading cotton, which it procured at support price from October 2014, to protect farmers from sharp decline in domestic prices in view of likely higher output.
The Corporation has procured a total of 86 lakh bales of cotton in 2014-15 marketing year (October-September).
"We have started selling cotton through e-auction from January-end. So far, we have offloaded 2.7 lakh bales," a senior CCI official told PTI.
The official said that e-auctioning of cotton has been halted for some days due to closing of accounting work towards the fiscal-end.

CCI will, however, commence the e-auction of cotton from April onwards.
India is likely to produce around 40 million bales of cotton during 2014-15 as against 39.8 million bales last year, according to Cotton Advisory Board (CAB).