Cotton futures fell the most since June, after touching a 15-year high yesterday, as India’s farm minister came out against the government’s proposed limits on exports.
Farmers in India, the world’s second-biggest cotton grower and shipper, should get the “higher prices” exports may bring, the minister, Sharad Pawar, told reporters today in New Delhi. Limits on exports are scheduled to start next week.
“There’s talk of India getting back into the export market,” said Keith Brown, the president of Keith Brown & Co., a brokerage in Moultrie, Georgia. Right now, “we don’t have any new supplies coming on board to alleviate the shortness.”
Cotton for December delivery declined 2.45 cents, or 2.5 percent, to settle at 97.17 cents a pound at 2:43 p.m. on ICE Futures U.S. in New York, the biggest drop for a most-active contract since June 4. The price has gained 50 percent in the past year.
India’s exports will be limited to 5.5 million bales in the year beginning Oct. 1 in a bid to meet domestic demand, Commerce Secretary Rahul Khullar said on Sept. 4. The plan will be reviewed on Nov. 15, he said. Exports in the current year will reach 8.3 million bales, according to an estimate from the Cotton Advisory Board.
Bigger Indian Crop
India may boost output by 17 percent to a record 34.5 million bales in the next season, according to Nayan Mirani, the vice president of the Cotton Association of India, a trade group that represents 450 growers, ginners and traders. The government may lift export limits as soon as November, he said earlier this week.
A bale of cotton in India weighs 170 kilograms (375 pounds. The U.S. Department of Agriculture uses a different measure, a 218-kilogram bale (480 pounds).
Global cotton use will rise to 120.5 million bales in the year that began Aug. 1, the USDA estimates, outpacing production of 117 million bales. Inventories in warehouses monitored by ICE were down 96 percent this year as of yesterday.
U.S. export sales of upland cotton totaled 505,096 bales for the week ended Sept. 16, up 46 percent from the previous four-week average, the USDA said today. The U.S., the world’s biggest exporter, shipped 50,552 bales in the same week last year.
“The higher the market price goes, the more sales we make,” said Rogers Varner, the president of brokerage Varner Bros. in Cleveland, Mississippi. “The high prices were actually scaring mills into buying more.”
