BAMAKO (Reuters) - Mali is on track to hit a raw cotton production target of 600,000 tonnes for the 2014-2015 season as sowing draws to a close, the government-owned Malian Company for the Development of Textile (CMDT) said on Thursday.

The state cotton company said that, as of July 10, farmers had sown 97 percent of the planned 570,300 hectares, with 10 days still left until the close of the sowing season.

"We think that by the close of the sowing season, which is normally July 20, we will have reached 100 percent," said Ousmane Traore, a technical advisor to the CMDT. "We are sticking to our target of 600,000 tonnes."

Mali's government in May set its target sharply above last season's output of 440,000 tonnes, aiming to take advantage of high global cotton prices.

However, rains in Texas - the United States' biggest growing state - have since boosted expectations for the 2014/15 crop and placed prices under pressure. Prices have fallen by around one-third since early May.

Traore said the final production figure would depend on the levels of rainfall and the application of farmers in tending their crops, Traore said.

Mali's annual cotton season runs from April to April. A production phase from May-June to Oct-Nov is followed by a period of sales from Nov-Dec to March.

In April, President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita increased spending on agriculture to 15 percent of the state budget from 10 percent, including more than $80 million in subsidies for fertilisers.

Mali has some 3.5 million cotton farmers and cotton is its second largest export, after gold.