BAMAKO (Reuters) - Low rainfall has reduced the official forecast for Mali’s 2017/18 cotton crop to 706,000 tonnes from 725,000 tonnes, a Chamber of Agriculture official said on Monday.

The new figure still dwarfs last year’s harvest of more than 647,000 tonnes and will mark a record for the West African country thanks in part to higher prices and fertiliser subsidies.

“The harvest forecast is reduced to 706,000 tonnes because of the problem of rainfall. There was the early cessation of rains - the rains stopped suddenly on Sept. 22,” the Chamber of Agriculture’s Secretary General, Brehima Cisse, told Reuters.

The season runs from April to March in two phases: production between May/June and September/October, and commercialisation from October/November to the end of March.