In an effort to satiate increasing demand for extra fine cotton, Indian public sector and the business community leaders have expressed willingness to buy Ethiopia’s high quality cotton variety.
During a study tour dubbed: “African Biotechnology Tour”, representatives of the public sector and the business community in India expressed their strong intention to importing Ethiopian “external-large staple cotton” one of the finest varieties which most countries along the Nile River are well-known to produce.
Currently, India imports substantial amount of extra-large staple cotton from Egypt and the US. Previously, Sudan was one of the major suppliers to the India market until the exports of cotton started to be regulated by the government. Hence, to satiate the demands for high quality cotton, Indian businesses are considering Ethiopia as one of the potential sourcing countries.
Sheik Surech Kotak, Chairman of Kotak & Co and Kotak Ginning & Pressing Industries Ltd. and the former president of Cotton Association of India, asserted that Ethiopia is the potential candidate that can supply the extra fine cottons India is looking to import elsewhere.
Hadush Girmay, vice president of Cotton producers and Ginners Association of Ethiopia, agrees Ethiopia has the potential to export high value cotton despite the alleged shortages in the country. According to Hadush, the textile and garment manufacturing companies have never utilized the total produce of the country. He argues that there is a considerable under capacity production and shortage of budget that has contributed to the imbalance of demand and supply of cotton. Currently, the total amount of cotton needed to supply the textile sector stands around 65,000Mt; while the actual supply is around 35,000Mt. The gap has been adjusted through imports. Yet, according to Hadush, even the 35,000Mt has never been fully consumed by the textile factories for long saying artificial shortage has been created in the system. But he hopes the export potential is out there.
In a related news, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), a state run agricultural R&D facility in India, said that it has been working with the Ethiopian agricultural research institute to improve the productivity and yield patterns of Teff – the super tiny grain most Ethiopians depend on for their daily food consumptions. Yet, Teff has become a Hollywoodish nutrition and a healthy meal as movie stars are progressively engrossed by it. Officials of the state run institute have also attributed that they are supporting the non-GMO activities of preserving the productivity among which their work with Teff is one of them.
One of the areas that the institute and its Ethiopian counterpart has been collaborating on was on finding ways to erect the Teff stems allow better applications of agricultural inputs. According to Endale Gebre (PhD), director of agricultural bio technology sector at the Ethiopian Agricultural Research Institute, EARI together with ICRASAT is working towards finding a solution and to improving the productivity of crop.
[www.thereporterethiopia.com]