India Must Aim To Become A Global Price Influencer In Cotton: CCI CMD
Lalit Kumar Gupta calls for stronger productivity, quality, transparency and price discovery across the cotton value chain
India should move beyond being a major cotton producer and work towards becoming a price influencer in the global cotton market, said Lalit Kumar Gupta, Chairman and Managing Director of the Cotton Corporation of India (CCI).
Speaking in Coimbatore on August 21, 2026, Gupta was inaugurating the biannual cotton conference organised by the Indian Cotton Federation in association with the Indian Cotton Association. He said the Indian cotton sector needs a coordinated focus on productivity, quality, transparency, differentiation and effective price discovery to strengthen its global competitiveness.
India is among the world’s five largest cotton-producing countries and accounts for a significant share of global cotton acreage. However, domestic production remains insufficient to meet the country’s consumption requirements. Gupta said the sector’s objective should be to establish India as a globally competitive cotton producer.
Gupta highlighted productivity as one of the most important areas requiring attention. Under the Mission on Cotton, around five lakh hectares are targeted for productivity enhancement during the first year.
He also pointed to the results from high-density planting trials conducted across around 25,000 hectares, where yields of about 15 quintals of seed cotton per acre have been achieved.
Improving productivity, he said, would enable India to make better use of its extensive cotton-growing area and strengthen its position in global markets.
Gupta stressed that global buyers increasingly require consistent and contamination-free fibre quality. Reducing contamination, therefore, should be a collective responsibility involving farmers, ginners, traders, mills and other stakeholders across the value chain.
He also identified price discovery as a critical area for improvement. Greater transparency, standardisation and reliable market information are required to enable more efficient price discovery.
“We have fragmented data. We need actual data and this information should be integrated with the entire system,” Gupta said.
He added that better market intelligence and transparency would help strengthen the functioning of India’s cotton market and improve its ability to influence international pricing.
Gupta said the CCI had procured around 105 lakh bales of cotton from the market during the current cotton season and had sold approximately 94 lakh bales. The Corporation currently holds around 17 lakh bales.
K.V. Srinivasan, former President of the International Textile Manufacturers Federation, highlighted the role of technology in improving India’s cotton productivity.
He noted that the Indian textile industry received a significant boost during the 1990s as domestic cotton yields improved. A similar technology-driven transformation is now required to help India compete with major cotton-producing nations such as Brazil, the US and China.
Srinivasan pointed out that four countries account for around 74% of global cotton production, while India has about 38% of the world’s cotton-growing area. Raising yields across this extensive acreage, he said, could enable India to emerge as the world’s leading cotton producer.
