China cotton stock assessment

China cotton stock assessment
New cotton output: ginning factories in Xinjiang and inland have not restarted work basically in Feb, and ginning volumes are supposed to be around 14kt. From early Mar, ginners in Xinjiang began to resume operation successively, and ginning volumes of new cotton increased obviously from previous month, while operating rate in inland remained very low as growers in inland were unwilling to sell seed cotton with falling cotton prices. In Mar, new cotton ginning volumes are assessed at 87kt.

State cotton reserves: from Mar 1 to Mar 31, 208kt of new cotton was reserved into state warehouses, so this part of volumes was deducted among the all social stocks.

Import volume assessment: in Mar, the arrived imported cotton was mainly procured during Dec 2019 and Jan 2020, and during this period, there was no impact of the coronavirus pandemic, and defaults were rarely to see. Volumes of Brazilian and Indian cotton remained large in Mar. But from Sep 2019, the domestic cotton prices were almost lower than international cotton, so the monthly import volumes were lower from last season. In Mar, cotton imports may reach 120kt, down 19% year on year.